Once upon a time, at grandma’s house deep in southern Louisiana, there lived a large bookcase at the end of the hall, and upon this bookcase rested a vast collection of National Geographic magazines stretching back decades. And a granddaughter liked to play a game with Spirit called “Show Me.” No matter the circumstance, the then eight-year-old girl would ask to be shown what she needs to see. She’d stop Time, get still and present in the moment’s opportunity, and ask the question because every moment held the seed of potential, message, and learning. So she did this one day at grandma’s house: stood small in front of multiple yellow bindings marked with dates and in excellent shape as they were rarely touched once received in the mail. With eyes closed, she ran her hand inches from the spines, sensed the energy swelling within her own field, stood on tiptoes and gently eased down the copy beckoning to her. Silently, she accomplished this as she was not quite sure of the “rules” around the magazines; no one else ever seemed to enjoy them. “Show Me” didn’t stop there. Now Spirit had yet another reveal ready for her… why this one? So the girl tiptoed her way to the small spare room at the other end of the hall, quietly shut the door, sat on the twin unkempt bed with the magazine laid out before her. “Why this one?” She shut her eyes and made her way back to the still point within, to the feeling point existing in her fingertips, felt her way through the pages until she was led to open at that one distinct spot. As she opened her eyes again, a luminous bubble warmly held her, lit the edges of the usually dark room in golden light, and open before her winked the page revealing a small man in bright ceremonial poncho, wearing a brilliantly patterned chullyo, holding a small wood-carved flute to his mouth with Machu Picchu looming in the background. To her delight, she continued to flip through pages of this story, finding smiling llamas, sunkissed cheeks of cheerful children as their mothers weaved black, red, pink, yellow, white textiles near them. This breathed instant magic, instant knowing, instant remembering.
Then she heard the sounds of her grandma’s pretty flats step-stepping down the hall, and the girl tried to hide the book behind her back before the bedroom door creaked open. But grandma was quick, and as the door opened, she caught the edge of the magazine gleaming golden flutter and fly behind her granddaughter. She also caught the look of guilt in the girl’s eyes, and instantly soothed it with her own face melting into understanding as the lines softened around the edges of her lids and her mouth curled up into a soft smile.
“You know, you are welcome to have that; all you’ve got to do is ask,” she told the girl.
And you know what, I needed to hear those words, yet still I didn’t always ask for that which I wanted and sometimes didn’t even ask for that which I needed. This stubborn soul had a lot to learn over the next few decades. And when I recently moved through six months of deep study again with Dr. Alberto Villoldo and the Four Winds Society, he repeated a phrase that ringed more true than ever: “you can either have what you want, or you can have all the reasons that you can’t have what you want.” Boy, this has been a huge lesson for me! And it’s a lesson that required moment to moment awareness throughout my day. See, my mental chatter used to LOVE to let me know all the reasons I could not have what I desired, and the nasty part is that I believed it. Now, that chatter has moved further into the background, become more of a subtle whisper, and its suggestions have become much easier to acknowledge and then override. But I sure wasted some precious time believing in that voice. I won’t over-analyze the whys, but I have begun to understand its source, and that has rendered it powerless. Yay!
So, back to that girl, that me, that found a treasure in a magazine at my grandma’s house so long ago (or so it seems)…. at the time, I wondered, could one become a powerful medicine person or is it something you are born into, somehow made special as you entered this world, or maybe you had to live in a cool place like Machu Picchu or in the Himalayan Mountains? I took my inner broom and dust pan and swept the possibility under Mary’s mat. Until 2006…. that was the point when I quit my corporate power job that I knew would kill me in the end, and traded in my fancy clothes and swanky downtown apartment for one suitcase and a one-way plane ticket to Kripalu in the Berkshire Mountains of Massachusetts so that I could meet and serve my shaman teacher, Dr. Alberto Villoldo, who at the time would visit at least once a month. The pay off has been massive as I received initiation and training that year so long ago and recently completed a six-month intensive training that began this past 2020 summer.
Then I realized….yes…yes, little Mary, you can become a powerful medicine woman; in fact, you’ve always been, and it’s part of what you always will be. Dr. Villoldo reminded us this past Fall that a person of power realizes how to shift the probable to the possible. And each day, I live the possible. The gifts that this intensive brought me are ongoing. I am now learning to play the guitar (something I’ve longed to do since I got my first record player and my first John Lennon record at age 4), and I’m turning all of those poems I’ve written all of my life to song. To me, this is true healing… to get out of my own way and to step right into that destiny that has been calling me for decades. It’s never too late to heal, to begin, to realize the great gift that you are. It is my prayer that you, too, begin today… do the thing that has been calling you for eons, and in that experience exists the truth of magic, the creative power of possibility, and the expression of the great gift that you truly are.
Transformation Through the Deeper Practices of Yoga, Sound, & Energy Medicine 