My Beloved Grandmothers, Grandfathers, Wise Elders, Teachers, Beloveds, Seen and Unseen, Mystery Unfolding, as I clamber aboard this unforgiving technology, forgive me – my hesitant responses, or even nil ones, as this old mind cannot quite fathom the unity between fingertip and keyboard and ask for you patience and love.
Beloved – Other than my three sons, whom I shared with yesterday and who live in other parts of the world, this is the first time that I have publically spoken about this journey that I was blessed on being sent on 31 years ago this coming Wednesday (New Zealand Time)
I dedicate this journey to all those who believe in the Divine Feminine Energy of Water and in my understandings wears the sacred aura of Lapis Lazuli.
April 13 2016.
Sacred Journey
For JGM
On April 13 1985, a few days after I had turned 34, I suffered a catastrophic work related injury, falling from the top of a 120ft petroleum storage tank at the Marsden Point Oil Refinery in New Zealand where I was employed by a private contractor that resulted in my death…
(There is chaos at the accident site for at least 25 – 30 minutes before calm is restored)
Silence – Everything in this world I find myself in, appears in a state of deep respectful silence. The landscape is filled with a lapis-blue fog it covers almost everything. I know it was just moments after the incident that I observed myself swimming naked in an unfamiliar river in the foothills of the Brynderwyn ranges.
Brynderwyn, how bittersweet that name rolls across the tongue of a childhood memory. I was born in the heart of one of its valleys. My beloved father TeToti put to ground my placenta there in accordance with our customary lore. Brynderwyn, the Welsh name given for the ranges overlooking Marsden Bay where this accident occurred, situated in the province of Taitokerau, Northland, Aotearoa, New Zealand. There are Maori and Waitaha names for the area as well, but that’s another story waiting for another more appropriate time.
Even though I was observing from afar and confirmed to myself it was indeed I who was swimming, I became overwhelmed with this incredible feeling of love. As well, there was a pity for the “self” of me that was out there by himself in the water all alone in the numbing silence, because I looked so fragile, helpless. I wondered why I wasn’t out there with me? Why I had become separated from myself? Why I had abandoned myself at such a critical time? Me here, me over there, this surreal place, the realization struck me, I must be dead, dying, or going to die, or something. I began to feel guilty about who I was for deserting me. I was heart broken and started to wail.
Remorsefully, I rejoined myself, that part of me I’d given over to the river, and a united force was awoken. My body felt different, but new clothes always do. We were happy. I had a new sense I wasn’t alone in that river and neither was that world of silence silent, or empty nor full. I began to listen and I began to remember.
It felt strange to be gliding through the water without too much effort. In fact, when I began to “move into it” to relax, it took no effort whatsoever, even swimming against the current as I was. Like dewdrops on a leaf, leaves on a tree or petals on a flower, some other power mightier than the self, like the rain or the wind, or in my case the river, began to dance its greater dance within me. Embracing me. Penetrating the very pores of me, transcendent. And as the current of the river begins to change its rhythm and becomes more forceful, the invisible power that had so lovingly imbued me sets me free amongst Its tempest. Trusting me. It is then that I come upon the majestic waterfall that had been hidden from my view by the thick stand of trees. In any other world I would have heard the roaring of this cascading wonder. Even so, a fierce urgency overcomes me, urges me forward. For some unfathomable reason I am moved to get myself under its silent falling waters to bathe.
I am being tossed and turned in the maelstrom emanating from the rapids and currents of the tumbling fury as I attempt to slowly swim forward through the chaotic waters to reach nirvana. From above a ray of sunlight slices through the seemingly impenetrable canopy of lapis-blue fog that has blanketed this entire nightmare, or has it been, in reality, a spiritual baptismal and my beloved sons’ cries come echoing through on this piercing shaft of light, shattering that veil of numbing silence and I finally hear for the very first time the magnificent psalm…of the waterfall…
Or was it…the first beat…of a heart…being reawakened?
Raymond TeKorako Ruka