Here’s what I’ve come to accept about my HIV diagnosis. My diagnosis was meant to be. It was fait accompli based on my behavior, thinking and emotional distortions. A shaman would have it no other way. So, I was meant to have the disease of HIV/AIDS, so I could understand and work through my imbalances as a gay man and as a human being. For me, it has been an immense challenge to come to objective terms with myself. I’m no saint but I know that a lotus blossom reaches up from the muck and that a rose grows best in manure. I’m also not a victim or a child anymore. I realize that I dumped the manure on myself or allowed others to dump it on me in my life. I’m responsible, and unlike the mythological king Sisyphus, pardon the pun, I know I’m not doomed to push a boulder up a hill for all eternity only to watch it roll back down again. Forget it, I’m through.
As a shaman it is my responsibility to develop a wide body of knowledge of myself and the world around me. I do my best to objectively observe myself, although never actually achieving objectivity, those around me and society at large. One thing that has me concerned is the rising cost of medical care and the slashing of social healthcare budgets. What will we do if more banks fail? What will we do if we don’t have access to our medications? What will we do if hospitals and healthcare becomes reserved for only those who can pay with cold hard cash? What will we do if more states declare bankruptcy or even the federal government becomes insolvent? How will we cope with our immune deficiency diseases? We’d better have a plan and soon. Frankly, I have never really held out any true hope of pharmaceutical research providing a cure for HIV/AIDS at least not until there is more money to be made off health rather than sickness.
As I really got down to assessing my chances for coming up with a realistic practical plan for healing or alleviating HIV I was initially rather demoralized. Unlike major corporate health behemoths, I knew I didn't have a team of researchers, a college degree in anything vaguely science oriented, a truckload of money or a well-stocked and tricked out laboratory in order to generate a cure for HIV. What I did have was determination to think about autoimmune diseases within the scope of my shamanic experiences, something others did not possess. As I said in prior articles, shamanism is a creative divine feminine energy and it was that force which "pulls" me toward new and meaningful learning opportunities.
The notion of being pulled is important in the understanding of shamanism. In simplest terms a shaman is a magnet that is conscious and alive and who can be pulled, repelled or directed by electromagnetic energy. The notion of a magnetized human body is not fiction but is fact. Every human being has an electromagnetic field produced by the orbiting and spinning of the negatively charged electrons around the positively charged protons in one’s atoms. The human body also has iron in it’s blood that can be magnetized and magnetite in the upper nose and forehead. A shaman’s magnetized body can be directed or pulled by electromagnetic fields opening up realms of information and sensation. Shamans are found across all cultures and throughout all ages of human history. A shaman is a function, a protector of the tribe and is someone who accesses higher realms, in my case usually internet research, so that useful knowledge can be brought back for the benefit of all. Of course part of the problem with the internet is that there is a deluge of information of dubious pedigrees, so any search for truth and understanding should have discernment and perspicacity as constant companions.
There is an initial fear that one goes through when they begin to naturally become a shaman rather than pursuing a specific course of study with a traditional shaman. Without a teacher per se, though my true teachers are those authors whose works resonate with me, my natural reaction was to study science. Science has a way of calming me when my perceptual framework has been exponentially enlarged and I’m traipsing around on unfamiliar turf. I also found that I needed to stop dissociating, via excessive daydreaming in my own life, as it is my life which constantly provides me with valuable signs, signals and clues which would otherwise be missed by a distracted consciousness.
My development as a shaman has been intentionally slow and studied, and considering the level of learning I’ve experienced so far, I’m glad I didn’t rush things. It is exactly my idiosyncratic approach to shamanism which has nudged me to blend together elements of mythology, symbology, quantum physics, electromagnetic field study, biology and mysticism into what I call Quantum Aquarius Rising. What I’m aiming for with this proposal, and this blog, is to throw a stone, or rather STONEWALL, of understanding into the pond of our community.
