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Love Flowering of the Shaman

There is a new kind of love blossoming in me. This is the love flowering of the shaman or of the magician. I planted this garden by committing to realize my purpose here in this incarnation. Yet I didn't realize at the time that I was planting! These fresh, dewy buds have sprung up from the soil of my heart most unexpectedly. My body and my heart area in particular feel so much pleasure in response, as if I am made for this strange loving.

Joy and boundless gratitude and utter patience: these words offer hints only as to the mood of this alien flower of love. Calm contemplation of Being-ecstasy. I turn to another and recognize my Self, but in a completely different mode. I sit with a friend, in contact with that divine being. The recognition is non-intellectual. It is physical--electrical, magnetic. It is from the heart. And when the light of being shines through and not just behind that person, the act of loving one another in this strange way becomes even wilder. It is as if our body/minds are particle accelerators. Physicality and consciousness seem to act like a species of mirror, folding and bending and redirecting the pure light of being--slowing it down, creating color and pattern and planes of matter that can touch and interact and dance. This love is ecstasy, ecstasy!

This love path of the shaman has not been easy for me. When I entered puberty and the oppressive world of known things began to grab at me, I began my descent. I was determined to be authentic. However, my search for reality and meaning seemed to uncover only falsehood and hypocrisy, especially in myself. I went looking for the real me, peeled off the layers, found nothing. If I wore one set of clothing, I became that sort of person as far as the world was concerned. Internally too, though I preferred rebellious personae over conforming ones, I could find nothing of true value that made me one thing rather than another. I seemed to be nothing but my clothes.

If I dressed in rebellious clothing, people abused me. If I dressed conservatively, they treated me well. It seemed that people were ruled by programmed responses to externals. I was disgusted and disillusioned by this result. No one else appeared to mind the complete lack of reality in social relations. I felt so alien from other people that, in trying to defend my dwindling sense of sanity, I began to despise humanity.

And so I came to be paranoid and alone, hysterical and cruel, utterly miserable. Deep down, I knew myself to be a monster, something that never should have existed, something that no one can know about. But a seed remained alive. Even in my darkest hours in hell, when I longed to kill myself hour-by-hour and minute-by-minute--even then the naked, mischievous daughter of my dreamer self grinned and laughed with glee at knowing the joy of existence.

Even in those darkest hours of my life, no matter how much despair and misery I generated, a spark of me knew this life as a beautiful game. That spark, that mischievous daughter, is sprouting now, springing out into the world through me, taking over this body and walking this planet again for the first time since my youngest childhood. She is the one who knows how to love in freedom. The daughter-spirit knows how to love without separating any one thing from any other thing. She knows how to love without force. She knows how to love with every part of her, shamelessly, boldly, joyfully. She knows how to be without holding back. She knows how to be in harmony with others, with all that is.

This is amazing to me. I witness this transformation in myself and--gratitude!--I witness it in my fellow travelers. I don't know how many of you know that the Tequihua volunteers are mainly people who have committed to realizing themselves and that we embrace this work of transmitting the Toltec arts and teachings with the intent of transforming ourselves into our Selves. Over time I have seen many of my colleagues become increasingly themselves, increasingly authentic, increasingly strong and free. To see the light beginning to shine more and more through some of the faces of these, my dearest friends--how much joy?

Love and gratitude to you, my friend who are reading this, without whom there would be no teaching.

 Eric N. Peterson is a Toltec priest and member of The Tequihua Foundation, a Riverside, Southern CA nonprofit whose mission is to continue the ancient consciousness-transforming arts of the Toltecs. The Aka Dua is an energy prepared by a particular Toltec line. The Aka Dua assists in the alchemical process of transformation by which an ordinary human becomes the shaman.

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