style="font-size:15px;"> “Who says it does? I don’t know, maybe it doesn’t. We used to play a game, ‘hide and seek in nonordinary reality.’ Since everything changes over there, you may not recognize your friend or your cat over there, so we give the friend something to help us recognize him, or we hold onto the cat during transformation.”
In my study of shamanism, I felt confused about the different kinds of animal spirits: divine animals, deities in animal form, and spirits of animals. I asked Iron Feathers if he could explain the difference.
“A divine animal is the divine in animal form, not the divine in an animal,” he said. “Spirit created humans to recognize itself — so they say. The divine in animal form is a projection so that we can recognize it because we can only see what we can recognize.”
Once he said this, I understood my Bisti owl a bit more.
Iron Feathers continued, “Humans in turn created spirit so they could recognize it, like trying to find words to explain spirit. For example, Ben Franklin created his own vocabulary for electricity. Electricity always existed, but we did not discuss it until he made up the words to describe it.”
“Do you find that there is a hierarchy of animal spirits?” I asked.
“There are animal spirits in all three worlds, the upper, middle, and underworlds. They are mainly in the underworld, playing. One teacher said, ‘Go play with them; they want to have fun and be seen.’ Animals differ from one plane to the other. And again, we can only conceive of things being the way they are for us. So it makes sense to us that there is a hierarchy like ‘mid-level management’ because our world is set up that way. What I have experienced is that spirit is spirit, and we’re all part of spirit — so there is no hierarchy. There may be different positions of enlightenment, like for the Hindu. You do not go from board member to CEO, but perhaps become more filled with spirit or more a part of spirit. When I am in nonordinary reality, some things are similar to this world, and there are places that have no relation to here and I don’t know how to describe them.”
In my efforts to better understand the spiritual nature of animals, I wanted more than to just talk about shamanism and the spirit realm. I was eager to hear the silent voice of the Great Spirit and see what animals would teach me, and so in September 2001, I prepared to set out upon my own vision quest. The plan was to live in the high mountain desert of southeastern Utah alone for three days and nights with no food and only a tarp for shelter. In preparation, I participated in sweat lodges, meditated, prayed, took daylong solo hikes, and wrote in a journal about the animals I encountered.
Several days before my departure, as I drove to my first appointment, I heard shocking news on the radio. I called home immediately to tell Jean-Luc to turn on the television — it was the morning of September 11, and a terrorist attack had turned New York’s World Trade Center towers into a pile of rubble. Airports nationwide were closed; terrifying images appeared on the television and the internet; and the radio roared with angry voices. People I spoke with in Durango seemed terrified and left their jobs to be with family.
I prefer the quiet of nature when turmoil strikes, and so I looked forward to my journey a few days later. On September 16, I traveled far from the noise and fear of the city into the wilderness until eventually I sat surrounded by flowers and the soft sounds of insects, birds, and frogs. Warm air, cool breezes, fluffy clouds, autumn colors, and solitude welcomed me. Far from the news broadcasts, I found peace, while the rest of the nation suffered from sadness, worry, and fury.
My guide was CJ, a petite, older woman, and we made the trip together. We hiked down into a canyon to camp and prepare for my solo trip into the wilds. Bear scat and mangled chokecherry bushes along the trail reminded me of the serious bear problems in Durango, where dumpsters and orchards entice them. Drought conditions had created a wild food shortage. Bears raided people’s trash bins, ravaged fruit trees in yards, and even went into some houses. But we did not talk about that. I made every effort to follow CJ’s instruction to leave the world behind and be fully present in the moment.
As we descended into the ravine, the cathedral-like peaks on the opposite wall came into view. The steep, rocky cliffs with scattered brush looked like the perfect place for a mountain lion to rest and groom as she overlooked her territory. On the valley floor below, we set up base camp under two tall ponderosa pines.
The next morning CJ counseled me. She lit a bundle of white sage and smudged me with its smoke. Then she sent me out alone to find a place to live for my three-day vision quest.
I hiked along a faint trail following the stream as it curved through the canyon. Thick vegetation underfoot indicated that no person had walked on it for some time. The perfect location took some consideration, but I finally found my spot about a mile away from base camp. The home I chose was near the water, with shade. I hiked back to camp to get CJ and take her to see the place, so she would know where I was. Then we went back to camp for our final meal together.
“Get your pad and journal. Before you go out tomorrow morning, it may be helpful for you to choose a power animal to represent each of your chakras,” said CJ. Chakras are vibrational energy centers along the central axis of the body. The word chakra is Hindu, but the centers are common in many religious beliefs. They are perhaps related to the endocrine glands. CJ instructed me, “Lie back and, as I ask the question, choose an animal, the first that comes to your mind.”
I reclined on my pad underneath the two large ponderosas, enjoying the soft pine-needle-covered ground and the scent of vanilla from the tree bark.
“Relax and look into your first chakra, the area at the base of your spine. This is your connection to the earth. What animal do you see? If you wish, give it a name.”
The first chakra animal was “Sheba,” a cat I once had who used to hike with me. With each question CJ asked, I imagined an animal and drew its picture. For the second chakra, the personal power center, I chose a reptile and drew the image of an alligator curled into a circle in my abdomen, representing qi circles, a way of moving energy in the pelvis. A bumble bee playing in the flowers was the third chakra animal. For the heart center chakra, I chose “Horse runs free — Liberty.” For the fifth chakra, the throat, the area of speaking the truth, I chose the owl.
“Take a breath and relax as you look into your sixth chakra,” CJ said. “This is your place of knowing, your clairvoyance. What animal do you see there?”
Just then, a fly landed on my forehead and walked around. I swished him away; he landed again, and then again. “Okay!” I thought. “Fly — Garbage-Head, the fly — clean up my thoughts. Whenever you come, I will notice my negative thinking. Then you can eat the mental garbage and fly away.”
For the seventh chakra at the top of my head, I saw the bat who flies to the sky. For the eighth chakra, I chose two power animals: the giraffe that reaches to the sky and the white spirit buffalo that runs in the heavens.
I slept soundly that night, but I was awakened early the next morning by CJ pounding on a drum. She did everything she could to hurry me, which I resented. As she hastened me to pack my backpack, I gathered a sun cap, sunglasses, sunscreen, and a full water bottle. I laced my hiking boots and was off.
I felt no fear until that moment. So I made up a song to sing as I hiked.
Hey now, everybody
Hey now, sing along with me
Hey now, everybody
