A Time Machine of Skin and Bones
During the discussion following a teleseminar on shamanism, I shared a brief sketch of an experience I had. I was encouraged to post it, so I've shared "a shift." This story will be included in a non-fiction book I've been working on.
Blessings to you,
Don from "Fort Worth" (a.k.a. Saoul)
-------
"Welcome back to New Mexico," the handsome, thirty-something Latino said. I looked into his eyes, and noticed that they smiled like Mona Lisa's lips. I felt comfortable in his presence, but the surroundings confused me.
What was I doing back in New Mexico?
The two of us were standing on the primitive dirt road right in front of the ell-shaped adobe building where the woodworking shop had been. I was back at the ranch called San Felipe del Rio. I loved New Mexico, The Land of Enchantment. And I loved this ranch in particular, perched as it was on the flank of the tallest mountain in the state. But I didn't remember how I had gotten there.
Oh, yeah!
I lifted my eyelids. I wasn't in New Mexico. Mid-morning sunlight flooded into my open eyes from a half-dozen windows in the living room of a house we called Timberlane. That house had been an officer's club, built during the Spanish American War. It was one of three houses on an island 65 miles south of New Orleans. I had lived there in a spiritual community with 12 other people for the previous four years. It had been ten years since I had been to New Mexico. The trip I had just made there and back happened while I was meditating. I looked at my watch. Only 20 minutes had passed.
Maybe I had dozed, but it sure didn't seem like I'd been asleep.
I breathed deeply the last of the coolness of a July day that would soon to be hot, and then said goodbye to the silence as it retreated from footsteps coming down the hallway. A few moments later someone entered the room from behind me.
"Good morning, Saoul. You have a letter." It was Tasha's voice.
I turned toward her. "And good morning to you, Tasha. So, you made a boat run this morning already, huh?"
"Yeah. We needed a few groceries, and I decided to go early before the heat set in and the winds kicked the waves up. By the way, the motor on the 14-footer isn't idling very smoothly. You probably oughta take a look at it."
"Will do."
I glanced at the letter that Tasha handed me just before she left the room. The return address told me that my friend Mary Ann, who I hadn't heard from in nearly a year, had moved...to Taos, New Mexico. The short letter had few details, but she let me know that life had been good to her in Taos. She invited me to visit if I happened to be out that way.
Hmmm. That's an interesting coincidence. A synchronicity, maybe? Welcome back to New Mexico, the Latino had said to me.
I decided to take a stroll out to the old fort before working on the outboard motor. I always felt surrounded by a deep peace when I stepped within the walls of that old brick fort. Fort Saint Philip had been completed by the French in 1797 to guard their claim to the lower Mississippi and the city of New Orleans. The original brick fort had seen nine days of battle during the War of 1812. And during the Civil War, it had suffered from 12 days of heavy bombardment from Union gunboats before they sailed past to capture New Orleans. But in spite of 21 violent days in its past, I used the fort as a peaceful place of refuge and contemplation.
I had built a medicine wheel right in the middle of the fort shortly after Grey Eagle, of the Seneca Nation, had visited our community and shared his wisdom. He taught us how Native Americans used the circles of rocks as symbols of the circle of life. "A medicine wheel contains all that is. And all circles have neither beginning nor end," he had told us.
I walked inside the fort, and reverently entered the circle of rocks. I stepped into "all that is," and stretched out on my back beside the large stone that held the place of honor in the center.
New Mexico? Would the circle of life lead me back to New Mexico?
I threw that question up past the cloudless blue sky...past Grandfather Sky, as Grey Eagle called it. An answer didn't come back down. That was ok. Grey Eagle said that what goes up to Great Spirit, must come back down.
Looking straight up, I watched two bayou birds pass overhead. Both of them made a clock-wise circle directly over the medicine wheel. I had seen that happen several times before, and I had mentioned it to Grey Eagle. He said that a medicine wheel creates a vortex of energy that spirals up from the earth, and that birds could sense it. I imagined my question about New Mexico spiraling up there right now. I let it rise, and let it go, and then headed to the boat dock to work on the outboard motor.
* * *
"Mail call. Letter for Tasha." It was Veleja. She had just gotten back to the island with another day's mail. She walked toward Tasha, who was standing in the kitchen, and then she glanced at me as I ate lunch in our 50-foot long dining room that had once been the officers' duckpin bowling alley. "Good afternoon, Saoul," she said and then handed Tasha a letter.
I guess there's no mail for me today.
Veleja went on speaking to both of us. "I got a letter from Caroline. She said she's planning to leave on a trip to New Mexico next week, and wanted to know if any of us want to ride with her." Caroline didn't know my friend Mary Ann. Their only connection was that Mary Ann had sent me a letter from New Mexico, and Caroline was about to head that way.
Two days had gone by since my question had spiraled skyward. I had no doubt that an answer had just come back down.
* * *
"Before we left New Orleans, I heard on the news that a guy and his girlfriend were camping in Colorado and a bear ripped into their tent and killed 'em."
Caroline's comment had lunged out of an extended period of silence as we twisted along the highway through the mountains on our entry into northern New Mexico. If such beauty were a drug, I would be an addict, and I had been lost in the ecstasy of a natural high. Her comment came like a cup of cold water in my face. Then she went quiet again, leaving me to make what I would of that bit of news.
We had camped the night before in the flatlands of Kansas. Our tent had been pitched on the edge of a farmer's field, far away from any bears. But I knew that there were bears in these mountains. I had seen bear tracks in the snow when I lived at San Felipe del Rio, and my friend Allen had actually met a bear, without incident, on that dirt road just up from the ell-shaped building where the woodworking shop had been.
Caroline and I had both planned to camp while we were in New Mexico to cut expenses. But our first stop was at San Felipe del Rio, and there was a chance that we would be offered a short stay in a vacant log cabin. However, the ranch was a group children's home...actually four large homes with about 25 children living in each of three of them. At least that's the way it had been when I lived and worked there ten years earlier. I couldn't be certain that there would be a vacant cabin. But what I was certain of was that there were bears in woods that surrounded the cabins.
As we twisted along that road into New Mexico, I tried to ignore the thought of a bear's open jaws coming down on my face. But that errant image had taken my imagination hostage. I didn't want to die from teeth and claws, or even come close. My ecstasy at having arrived back in New Mexico had given way to bone-marrow-deep fear. I didn't want to admit to myself that I could be that afraid of dying, but when I held my hand out to get some feedback, I saw that my body was shaking every bit as much as my mind.
I hadn't really come to New Mexico to visit my friend Mary Ann in Taos, although I did hope to see her. I hadn't come to New Mexico to visit old friends and former co-workers at San Felipe del Rio, although that was in my plans. I had come to New Mexico to confront my death. The reason that I had been meditating in the living room back on the island a week earlier was because I felt it was time to confront my death once again. I had entered that meditation in search of an insight into when and where that might happen.
I didn't fully understand why I felt the urge to confront my death from time to time. This would be the third time in the past 15 years. I found nothing morbid or depressing about it. Death can be a phase of growth, just as a caterpillar dies to become a butterfly, or a sperm cell dies to become a human. The first time that I traveled to confront my death, I confronted a symbolic death. I experienced a profound spiritual awakening in Florida that directed my life from that time forward. The second time was different. I went to Mexico to confront my death, and when I did, I thought that I had come to the end of my time on earth.
Four hours after arriving in Mexico City, I was lying on a bed in a room at a downtown hostel. As I read a book about Japanese Zen Buddhism, I suddenly felt dizzy. My first thought was that I had chosen the wrong restaurant for supper. I raised my head to shake off the dizziness only to realize that the building was shaking wildly.
Earthquake! I gotta get out of this building!
I headed for the doorway to the balcony, and couldn't believe that a building could sway so radically and still stand. I made the sign of the cross. Not being Catholic, it was something I had never done. But after I did it, my initial fear suddenly gave way to a soothing calm.
If the building collapses and I die, it'll be ok. I'll go quickly. A large piece of masonry or a timber will probably crush my skull.
But I decided to stop in the doorway of the balcony and brace myself rather than try to get down three flights of stairs.
I'd rather be near the top of the rubble pile than on the bottom. If I die, ok, but I'd rather not.
Dusk had just faded as I looked beyond the balcony into the heart of Mexico City. It looked like the world was coming to an end along with me. I saw bright flashes of light followed by explosions coming in rapid succession from all across the city. Maybe electrical transformers were exploding, or maybe there were powerful static discharges coming up from the earth as it was being kneaded like a piece of dough. I didn't know, but it was enough to terrify me...if I hadn't felt so calm. The shaking and swaying went on and on, and I waited to die. I'm not really sure how much time passed before the earth quit shaking.
I survived that earthquake. But after Caroline's comment, I could not imagine how I could find such a sense of calm if I had to confront my death while staring into the mouth of an enraged bear.
* * *
Soon after we turned off the gravel road onto the grounds of San Felipe del Rio, we passed a building set back in the woods that hadn't been there ten years earlier. I saw no vehicles, and no people, so I told Caroline to keep going. We came to Bob's house--he was the director--but I saw no cars and no people there either. We kept going and came to the cluster of three large group homes. Seventy-five children once lived in those houses and played in the yards, but there were no children playing. I hadn't even considered that the ranch might be abandoned. We parked the car, and got out.
"I'm going for a walk, Caroline. I'll be back pretty soon." I needed to be by myself to assimilate my surprise.
Why had my meditation brought me back to San Felipe del Rio, only to find no one here?
I headed down the primitive road toward the ell-shaped adobe building. As I approached it, I saw a pickup truck parked about 50 yards further down the road. The driver's door opened, and a man started walking toward me. As he got closer, I saw that he was a handsome, thirty-something Latino. In fact, he was the man I had seen in my meditation a week earlier.
"Hello," he said as we stopped right in front of the adobe building. I hesitated before replying. I was waiting for him to say, "Welcome back to New Mexico." He didn't, but then again, he had already welcomed me back.
"Hi, my name is Saoul. I used to work here, and came back to visit. I'm really shocked to find the place empty. Do you live here now?"
"No, I got permission to graze a few head of cattle down there in the pasture," he answered.
"Well, what happened? Why did the ranch close?"
"Oh, there are rumors. But I'm not one to repeat rumors. The State Police came in the middle of the night a few years ago, and took all the children away. They made everyone else leave that night. That's all I know for sure."
I had been staring into the man's eyes since we had come face-to-face, looking for their Mona Lisa smiles. But I didn't see it. His eyes had a puzzled look. He had been staring into my eyes, seeming to search for something.
Had he seen me in his meditation, too?
He gave me directions to the ranch custodian who lived down the road in the village of San Cristobal. Caroline and I drove straight there, and got his permission to stay at the ranch for a few days. I suggested that we could sleep in the director's house, but Caroline said she preferred sleeping in the fresh air. She pitched her tent in the front yard. But I decided to sleep inside. There were bears in the woods.
Just before midnight I went for a walk. My fear of having to confront a bear had gotten out of hand. I had come to New Mexico to confront my death, so I needed to follow though with it. If that meant crossing paths with a bear, then so be it. That afternoon I had found an eagle's feather while following memories around the property. I took that as an auspicious sign. I started down the road toward the ell-shaped building where Allen had once encountered the bear.
I held the eagle feather out in the bright moonlight. It quivered only slightly in my fingers. Yes, I felt only slightly afraid. At the ell-shaped building I turned around and headed back. My goal that night was to confront my fear, if not my death. But I had no intention of walking until I found a bear. As I got to the spot where Allen had seen the bear ten years earlier, I saw a shape among the scrub oaks just off the road to the right. I froze, and my heart started pounding. I could make out a bear's head, but not his body. It didn't move. The tree leaves wiggled slightly as cold air slid down the side of Wheeler Peak, but that was the only movement for several minutes.
I finally took a tentative step forward. The bear's head dissolved into indistinct patches of moonlight and shadow. I took another step. There was no bear.
* * *
Two days later, Caroline and I took a ten-minute ride on the gravel road that led from San Felipe del Rio to Lama Mountain to visit the spiritual community there. Founded in 1967, the Lama Foundation is one of the oldest intentional communities in the country. While I lived at San Felipe del Rio, I had visited the community from time to time, especially when notables arrived, such as the Dali Lama. Since I was a resident of a "sister" spiritual community, I was invited to spend a week or so as a guest.
The wholesome food, the daily group meditations, the Sufi dancing, and the wonderful, spiritual people all delighted me, but I sensed that I still had a mission to complete. I had come to New Mexico to confront my death. And like a caterpillar, I felt constrained within my skin. Another level of reality waited for me if I dared to approach it, I was sure. But I didn't have a clue what to do.
That third evening at the community, I sat down in my private dorm room to meditate with the eagle feather that I had found at the ranch. The feather represented flying, and I felt that I needed to fly, to get out of my skin, at least symbolically. I got very still, breathed slowly and deeply, and then focused on flying. Time passed. Or stopped. And then....
I was walking on the mesa below Lama Mountain toward the edge of the Rio Grande gorge. I looked down at the sliver of river 700 feet below. It was time to fly, so I leaped off the edge. But I didn't fly. I just hovered, flapping my arms wildly. I was suspended, neither falling nor flying, wondering how to resolve my dilemma. Then something grabbed me, scooped me up, and I was flying across the gorge, and then kept going above the mesa on the other side.
I was riding on the wings of an eagle, flying about a hundred feet above the ground. We flew toward one of three small mountains that rose out of the mesa about ten miles away. I landed on the side of that mountain in front of a flat outcrop of rock about 20 feet wide that rose straight up about 40 feet. Superimposed on the rock outcrop was the ghostly face of an old Native American. His eyes were not unkind, but he was looking straight at me and seemed to be taking my presence quite seriously. Just below him, at the base of the outcrop, I saw the end of a bone--an animal leg bone I thought--sticking out of the dirt. I turned to my left to get my bearings, and could see a small town that I knew to be Tres Piedras several miles away. And then my eyes opened, and I found myself back at the Lama Foundation.
Had I dozed during meditation again? No, I don't think I did. But had I really flown? I guess I'll never know for sure.
* * *
The next afternoon, after our work crew had finished the new outhouse, I looked around for a cool place to meditate. I walked into a small stand of two-dozen or so young aspen trees, and found a shady flat spot where I could comfortably sit down. A light breeze conditioned the air perfectly. I let a few last thoughts fade away.
Maybe my flying to that mountain had been a type of molting, a shedding of my skin. Maybe I don't need to confront my death this trip.
I breathed deeply and relaxed. All thoughts melted away. Again, time passed or stopped, I don't know which, and then a deep, emphatic voice roared, "It is important for you to go to Tres Piedras!" Shocked, I opened my eyes. The tops of the twenty-foot tall aspen trees were bent over horizontally before a terrific gust of wind from the north. Just as quickly as it roared in, the wind was gone.
Ok, ok! I'll leave for Tres Priedras tomorrow.
* * *
I caught a ride down Lama Mountain from a guy on his way to Taos. He dropped me off at the intersection of Highway 64, and just a few minutes later a twenty-something cowboy offered me a ride to Tres Piedras. I threw my backpack and canteen in the cluttered bed of his pickup truck, and climbed in his cluttered cab.
"Wha'cha goin' tuh Tres Piedras far?"
I paused, considering how to put it. "Well, I'm kinda on a spiritual pilgrimage."
"Oh, yeah? Don't know much 'bout that. You religious?"
"I couldn't say that I'm religious. But religious people believe in spiritual things, and so do I."
"Yeah? Like God, huh?"
"Yeah, like God. I believe in God, but I also believe that spirit is everywhere; in all things. Those rocks out there have a presence. They have being. And the nature of being is spirit. Spirit is the stuff that holds atoms together, whatever other people call it."
"I never thought 'bout that."
I waited for his next comment. It didn't come until we got to Tres Piedras about fifteen minutes later.
"Where ya want me tuh let'cha out?"
"Oh, this is as good a place as any." I got out, grabbed my backpack, and off he drove.
I turned around slowly, trying to orient myself, and trying to identify the small mountain I planned to climb.
When I had seen Tres Piedras from the mountainside, I must have been looking southwest, and the town was just a few miles away. It's got to be that mountain over there.
I started across the mesa, zigzagging around the sparse clumps of sage brush. About an hour later, the sun had heated up the frying-pan-flat mesa, and I had gotten really thirsty.
Oh, no! I left my canteen in the back of the truck.
I turned and looked back toward Tres Piedras.
It's about two miles back there. And I've got about two miles to go, and then I have to climb the mountain. I really don't want to walk all the way back. Surely I can make it another six hours or so without water. I'll just climb the mountain, find the rock outcrop, and see if there is a bone at base of it. Then I'll turn right around, and head back.
* * *
Halfway up the side of the mountain, the lack of water had taken a toll. I stopped to rest in a tiny, rugged, but relatively flat clearing. I had forgotten just how quickly the dry desert air could suck moisture out of my body. And since I had only recently arrived from my sea level island, the altitude demanded that I take huge gulps of air. With each gasp, I knew that I was expelling more and more moisture.
Five more minutes of rest, and then I'll start looking again.
I hadn't been able to see anything that looked like a rock outcrop on my approach to the mountain, and now, my range of vision through the scrub oak and pinon trees was 100 feet at most.
I'll search for another hour, no more, and then I've got to head back for water.
My breathing finally slowed, and I was ready to start climbing again when I heard a rumble. It sounded like thunder. I couldn't tell where it had come from, and there was no wind to give a clue. I heard it again. I stood up, walked a few feet, and looked through an opening in the trees. A dark, mean-looking storm cloud had rolled over the mountains from behind Tres Piedras, and was coming my way.
I need to find a place to pitch my tent, and quick!
I left my pack where it was, and scurried around trying to find a patch of ground free of rocks and big enough for my tiny, one-person tent. There wasn't such a spot!
The thunder intensified. I looked through the trees again. The storm had swelled from the heat of the mesa. The beast was following my trail, and time had run out.
I've got to take shelter right now. But where?
I grabbed my pack, and ran about 100 feet to the largest boulder I could see. It was about 10 feet high and nearly round. It offered very little overhang, but it would have to do. I huddled up against it. There was now no delay between the flashes and the booms of lots of lightening. Huge drops of cold rain started to fall. And in the next moment, the storm swallowed the mountain.
Ear-splitting lightening flashed above me, below me, and all around. It was like looking into the mouth of a wild animal, the bolts of lightening its long teeth.
I need safer shelter!
I looked around in every direction, but I didn't see a safer place. But what I did see was that the tallest tree in sight, by far, was only three feet behind me. If I had wanted to pick the best lightening rod on that mountainside, I couldn't have chosen better.
So, this is the enraged bear I have to face. Alright, then. I took a deep breath.
If lightening strikes that tree, at least I'll go quickly and in a huge flash of light. Could there be a better way to go? There certainly were worse ways!
I relaxed, and began to appreciate the awesome power of the storm. I had a ring-side seat to an incredible show.
A hailstone fell, and then another. Soon all the raindrops had turned to stone, and began to bounce within my reach. I picked up the marble-sized pieces of ice and threw them in my mouth. When the storm had pounced, all thoughts of my thirst had scurried away. Now, still in the teeth of that storm, I felt grateful for its presence.
What a blessing this storm turned out to be!
I kept chewing hailstones until my thirst was quenched. And then the storm released the mountain, and moved on, leaving me feeling very much alive.
* * *
Oh, yeah. The rock outcrop. Better get going. I might be able to spend a little more time looking for it now.
I was confident that it really existed, but could I find it? I stood up, and saw water standing in a bowl-shaped indention in a small boulder just a few feet away. I walked over, bent down, and sucked up another half-pint of water. Something on the ground in my peripheral vision registered. I looked down to see a black arrowhead. It pointed up the mountain, but not straight up, slightly further toward the West.
This whole trip had elements of being like a dream. And being dreamlike, that arrowhead just might be pointing the way to the rock outcrop. Wouldn't that be incredible! I reached down and picked it up. It looked like it was brand new. The tip of the point was needle-sharp. It could have punched through my skin with the slightest pressure. It couldn't have been thrown from a bow. That sharp tip would have chipped off. My thoughts went to the ghost-like face of the Indian I had seen superimposed over the rock outcrop. Had he seen through time, and seen me coming? Had he seen that I would drink from that boulder, and had he put an arrowhead down beside it to guide me? It was too incredible to be possible, but I took off running as if it were.
As I ran up the fairly step incline, hopping over rocks, I wasn't able to see very far ahead of me. I just focused on running as straight as I could in the direction the arrowhead had pointed. I hadn't run more than a few hundred when I saw it through the trees. The rock outcrop was about twenty feet wide, and about 40 feet high, just as I had seen it...but there wasn't a bone at the base of it. This was definitely the place, but there wasn't a bone. I stretched my hand out and pointed.
It had been right there. Exactly right there!
I jumped over, and went down on my knees. I thrust my hand down into the pinon pine needles where the bone had been, and wiggled my fingers deeper into the loose dirt. My fingers hit something. I wiggled my fingers more until I could grab it, and I pulled it up. It was a bone. It was the bone. But when I had flown to the mountain, it had been sticking slightly above the pine needles; white, bleached by the sun. I had seen it then the way the eagle must have seen it when she had been alive. But now I found it buried and yellowed.
I considered what had happened. I had traveled not only through space, but forward in time to see the Latino standing in front of the ell-shaped adobe building, and then I had traveled backward in time to see the bone sticking out of the dirt as it had many years in the past.
I was in awe. I stood, and looked up to admire the wondrous sculpture of the rock outcrop that the arrowhead had guided me to find. Just over halfway up, there was a ledge with sticks jutting out.
Is that a nest? Is that the eagle's nest? I stepped back to get a better perspective.
It looks like it might be a nest. I'm going to climb up there to see.
It would be a climb of over twenty feet, and it would be tricky. I could see very few solid handholds or footholds.
If I fall on the rocks below, my bones might get buried by pine needles, too, before someone finds them.
I took the risk, and climbed slowly using all my concentration. I got my head level with the pile of sticks and looked down...into a nest nearly five feet wide. Some of the sticks were thicker than my fingers. I had never seen such a huge nest, an eagle's nest. There were signs of deterioration. It obviously hadn't been used in many years, probably many decades. I took a few of the smaller sticks with gratitude, with the eagle's apparent blessing, and climbed back down. I sat on the ground, and spread out the things that I had found.
I have sticks from an eagle's nest, an eagle's feather, an arrowhead, and a bone. Why these things? Maybe they're symbols, just as if this had all been a dream. But how should I interpret these things? What do they mean?
* * *
I don't remember walking back down the mountain, or back across the mesa. And I don't remember how I got back to the Lama Foundation. I suppose I was in a daze, absorbed with trying to make sense of the mystery.
I do remember that when I got back, I sat down near the small stand of young aspen trees, and looked past the Rio Grande gorge, past the mesa, and stared at the mountain that I had flown to through space and time. I remember looking down at my hands, and thinking that I had built a time machine out of skin, sinew, blood, and bones. But it wasn't a time machine as we tend to think. It was a machine that had trapped me in space and time for so many years.
The circle of life had brought me back to the Land of Enchantment to confront my death. Many people avoid that subject. But having looked death face-to-face, I had learned something significant about both life and death. The north wind had been right; it was important for me to go to Tres Piedras.
I looked back across the mesa at the mountain. I knew that no machine is needed to travel forward and backward through time. I knew that my body is just a nest that I will one day leave; that I will fly away and that I will know which way to go. And I knew that when it is time to fly away, I won’t hesitate to leave my bones behind. I just hoped I wouldn't leave them in the mouth of a bear.
