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Being Called I don't remember asking for this. I had been going through rough times in ordinary ways, with a farm and a business that were in trouble in spite of my honest and hard working efforts to turn things around. The market had changed and I was having problems adjusting to that. My marriage hadn't ever been good, and now it was worse, with both of us wanting to be out of it but unable to find the funding for new lives. There didn't seem to be answers—if there were any, they were beyond my means. I did what I had done seriously only one other time in my life; I turned to the beliefs of my ancestors for answers. I prayed to the old spirits, honestly and seriously, because in the hardest times we turn to the things we believe most fervently. I don't remember expecting results. I'm mixed blood Indian and I wasn't raised in the old ways or on the reservation; my parents raised me White even though my father taught me things that were Indian. I didn't feel I had any right to the old beliefs, but it was something that came to me naturally, so I followed them anyway. I had the White preconception that it was all just superstition, and it surprised me to find that it wasn't. When I asked for help, people answered. They didn't seem to think it was unusual that someone would ask, and I quickly came to accept that it was normal for people who had lived other lives in other times to reach out for help in spite of distance and era. I think I went through the things normal people would, when faced with that situation—when suddenly their personal troubles become the focus of ethereal beings who appear as ghostly images floating in the air or built of light with no visible source, speaking in voices either mental or incredibly and physically real. I thought I might be seriously ill, mentally unstable, suddenly afflicted with hallucination, but there did not seem to be evidence of any of that. I continued to work and lead a productive though difficult life. I had no personal agenda which required belief in any of this, and none of it seemed nonsensical or off topic. If I sat still and listened, I'd get answers to my questions. If I followed the advice, good things would happen. I wasn't led to miracles, but I was guided to solutions, things that I had to do and work to accomplish. The answers worked. In many of the old traditions people speak of pacts and contracts—that if you make a deal with the devil, so to speak, there will be some payback involved. I do not mean to imply that I was dealing with anything evil—in fact it seems obvious that I was dealing with people, who were and are still in most ways ordinary people. But there is a common courtesy involved, that if something does you a favor it is polite to do something good in return, and like any other ordinary people, the ones who befriended me had projects of their own. They asked me if I'd be willing to help them, and I said that I would. That's how it began. Before I could actually do anything, I was told, I'd have to take a little test. It wouldn't be hard. There was a place I'd have to go, at a particular time that was a little over a month away, and all I'd have to do was stay there through the night and stay alive. I thought they were kidding, of course, and I asked about that right away. What do you mean, stay alive? Is this dangerous? Well, yeah, they said. A little bit. According to them I had about a fifty percent chance of living through it. I told them I thought that was pretty poor odds and maybe they should be looking for somebody who could do a better job of it. In fact, if I'm not likely to make it through, why are you even asking me? Their answer was simple: Because you can hear us. I had to admit that made perfect sense. I just happened to be the guy who picked up the phone. The heroes and professionals weren't listening. So I did reasonable things. I asked if there was any advice they could give me. They told me to live in a simple and clean way until it was time to go; eat the old foods of meat, berries, water and corn and give up the White foods totally. Don't drink alcohol, don't take any drugs—not that I had, actually I'd been living clean for a long time. I did ask what would happen if I chose not to go, and they said there was no penalty. They'd go away and I'd quickly forget that any of this had happened. I decided to go. I thought it was silly, but I felt that because it was silly I'd never respect myself if I didn't follow through. Obviously nothing would actually happen. But certainly, nothing would happen if I didn't go. It would be like they said—I'd learn to forget these strange things, now that the crisis was over and I didn't really need them. I'd be back to normal, and it would be sad. So when the time came, the night of the full moon in April of that year, I left everything behind and I went to the appointed place to waste an evening, feeling very awkward and stupid and not just a little bit afraid. What happened that night is a very long story. Actually I am not prone to "seeing things." I'm a very accomplished skeptic, well versed in technical issues. I'm not easily frightened and I don't jump to supernatural conclusions over ordinary things. But, almost immediately all sorts of strange things began to happen and kept happening. Something poking me in the ribs, but there was nothing there. I decided it was my imagination and it poked me again. And again. I heard voices in strange languages, saw what I thought were hallucinatory visions--and with no underlying physical reason for it. I wasn't even tired when it started. Every time I'd convince myself it was just imagination somebody would poke me in the ribs again, hard. I'm leaving a lot out, but fhe real event came along just before dawn, when I had passed my test and thought everything was over. There'd been a big storm that night, something right out of a horror movie, wind whipping through the cave and lightning crashing all around, I kept count and the lightning hit above me on the mountain nine times in a row. I thought I might get killed, because it conducts pretty well through the limestone. I think now that what did happen might have partly resulted from the way the lightning charged up the mountain, turned the cave into an electrified chamber maybe. I didn't know then that when the lightning hits that way during your vision quest, even just once, it means the Wakanyan, the spirits of storms and thunder, have chosen you as Heyoka. I ran across that much later, after I learned to deal with the aftermath. The word came to me in a vision and I looked it up. But right before dawn things were pretty quiet and I thought I'd take a nap before leaving, had a long way to go to get home. I closed my eyes just for a little bit and then noticed glowing light, thought the sun was coming up and shining into the cave. Looked around but it was still pitch dark. I started seeing more and more light, though, seemed like it was coming out of the rocks, glowing in strands of different colors. I figured something big was about to happen. The light was strong enough that I could see everything in the cave, and nothing looked very solid, more energy than matter possibly. Then all of a sudden the rock I was laying on disappeared, and I was laying on top of a hole about ten feet in diameter. Felt like one of those cartoon characters when the ledge breaks off the canyon rim and they're standing on air for just a second. Then I started falling. I was trying to convince myself this was just a dream or hallucination, but it felt real in all ways I could test it, and after I'd been falling a few seconds I decided it was really happening and I'd just had the bad luck to be laying on a thin crust of rock over a deeper cavern, when it broke. I really did think I was going to die. Hugged my knees and tucked my head down so I wouldn't break so many bones when I landed and hoped for the best. I started going through hoops of light, the same kind of light I'd seen up in the cave--whoosh, whoosh, kind of like driving past street lamps. Then I made a ninety turn really suddenly and starting traveling sideways through hoops of light, very weird stuff. All of sudden I've landed on my feet in the same place in the cave where I started out, but it's daytime and different weather, different season of the year, I look around and obviously it's a long time ago. I mean a really long time ago, centuries or thousands of years. So I'm a true believer. I do think it was a physical experience, and real, and it's right in line with the kinds of things ancient shamans (and modern ones) talk about. Time travel happens. |