Traveling in Reverse
All Aboard the Oldest Means of Spiritual Transportation!
We’re Going Home.
In this month’s visionary report we’re taking you all the way back to the original home of healing. Drop your categorical narrative imperative and find your way to the rhythms and tones that sing to a deeper part of you. To stop the conscious curse, let’s travel in reverse. Brad reports:
I dreamed Hillary and I were in a major city resembling Cape Town, South Africa. We were scheduled to present at an international conference on psychotherapy. We walked into the main auditorium and found a cheap and broken keyboard lying on a table, supposedly there for my use. Our request for a keyboard had not been taken seriously. They halfheartedly procured one, but it was unusable. The host arrived, but paid no attention to our concerns and clearly did not respect the importance of music. Without hesitation, we walked out of the auditorium, got in a car, and drove away.
Once on the road we realized we were, indeed, in Africa and were heading far away from the city, toward the wild outskirts. It was late at night and we had driven all day. As we pulled into a place where we could sleep before continuing in the morning, we realized we were heading home. We were driving in the direction of the Kalahari, the experiential birthplace of Sacred Ecstatics with its n/om arrows and nails waiting to spiritually cook with music and dance. We weren’t sure how the rental car we were in would ever make it there. That vehicle wasn’t made for rough road driving. Then we realized we were riding on a song—the gospel music we heard before we went to sleep. We were traveling in reverse—returning to the source and force from which our means of spiritual transportation was born.
I woke up startled at the former dream’s trajectory. Most of my professional life traveled from places like the Kalahari or Amazon to psychotherapy conferences where I conveyed, with or without words, what I had learned from older traditions of healing. Now I was traveling the opposite way—leaving behind psychotherapy that seemed hopeless, incompetent, and non-resourceful for a homecoming where all the resources needed to cook were readily available, respected, and appreciated.
In a final dream, Hillary and I were in Mexico. Some students we remember from the past were eager to see us. We were walking down a hall when three young men came up and one of them said in a serious tone, “This work is the most important thing in my life. I still must provide for my family and do my job (as he pointed to his wallet). But I am devoted to what you are teaching to feel alive and fulfilled.” Though we usually would tease someone for speaking that solemnly about our work, we chose to express deep gratitude for his recognition of Sacred Ecstatics. I woke up happy to be reminded of the many years in which we helped Mexican therapists travel in reverse and find their home in the heart of older healing ways. They still made a living but did so while feeling more alive and aligned with mystery.
The next morning, we remembered the music that ignited our soul the night before. One of the main characters of the gospel documentary, Say Amen, Somebody, was Mother Willie Mae Ford Smith, a pioneer of gospel music. In the documentary she described what singing gospel meant to her:
It’s just a feeling within; you can’t help yourself . . . It goes between the marrow and the bone. It just makes you feel like you want to — you hear me say I want to fly away somewhere? I feel like I can fly away!
All aboard, everyone! Let’s fly in reverse, using the hot cooking songs to travel back in space and time to the source of the force that feels like home. It’s time to go back to the beginning and start again. Put on your travelin’ singing and dancing shoes and catch what “goes between the marrow and the bone.” Let its emotion take you somewhere. Say Amen, somebody!
We discussed this dream, along with some commentary on the old shaking medicine, traveling way, in last week’s live broadcast for the Guild. Enjoy!