The Path is Clear...Survival

Anyone who has encountered difficult times knows that these moments always yield lessons to be learned, choices to be made and sometimes hidden worlds and doorways…

My journey with the wolf of Lupus (SLE) I affectionately call “My s’ung manitu tanka,” has provided all of the above and then some.

From the most tumultuous times, midst the most tortuous moments, when I often awakened to find the wolf’s yellow eyes staring back at me through my own, there was no room for denial. As I struggled to get my kidneys out of bed each morning, pulled my lead-like legs along, feeling as if I had already run forty miles and peered into the mirror to encounter my jaundiced eyes, the face I had come to know slowly disappearing and witnessing skin turning to bone, I had to embrace the wolf I loved—the same wolf I thought had also betrayed me.


I knew this would be a journey!

The peaks have changed and the Northern lights still shine through to guide me, comfort me and remind me of the shamanistic journey taken years before—when the white wolf I so adored took me into her den, sheltered me, and ultimately left me in charge of her cubs.
What a journey this has been!

I have fallen many times, been tested by tortuous arctic winds and backslides down icy peaks, seen my lifeless carcass being dragged by the cubs I raised and delivered into the shaman’s hands. Yet, these experiences are nothing knew to a Shaman. It is through these spiritually guided journeys that we become the healers. In many societies, this is the dream, the calling, the awakening.

Even now, after more than 10 years of awakening, of enduring the battles from within and without, I am still becoming. Yet, along the paths, the encounters have proved the richest. So, too, I see how my passage through the “middle way” has healed many and leads to the bridging of worlds, not just spiritual and geographic but communally. In Zen-like fashion, I have become aware that my exploration has led me back to the crossroads of humanity, of modernity and antiquity, East and West, native and non-native.

Within the core of this lies true healing.

So, too, within the heart of this lies my own healing, I realize. As my Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) Master recently told me, “Heal yourself. Fix yourself.”

I scarcely feel prepared, at times. Yet, this is how we truly learn. I have healed the Multiple Sclerosis over eight years time, leaving no traceable evidence of it within my body, with the help of these Masters and Chinese herbal medicine. I believe the release from the residual illness lies beyond the next few peaks, within the fires of transformation and inspiration and the wealth of experience.

However, true to my former Love’s words of warning many years ago, Man has entered in again. Modernity, power and greed have tainted the grounds here for me. I am hunted just as the wolf is hunted.

The path is clear……

To bridge these worlds, to heal East and West, man and nature, and fulfill sacred contracts, I must again journey far from here, perhaps never to return.

The ice melts away and the stone bridge beneath my feet has crumbled, as it had so many years before, plunging me into the icy cold waters below. Once more I seek the cave of enlightenment, the fire, and the sojourners--kindred shambhala warriors for the next phase. I have found them before and I will again. Somehow, I think the ancient Tang Dynasty Chinese physician Sun Simiao holds the key.

With gratitude for opportunities ahead, I honour those who share my journey, who open their hearts and spirits to share the collective knowledge and riches and pray my love and spirit touches someone beyond this circle. Namaste! 湘君