Chapter 7 – Into the Woods

Body and the Bushman

He’s tripping again, and, as usual, acid helps connect him to his body. He can see now just how exhausted he is. He needs to stop working so hard. He needs to relax. Why can’t he slow down? What is driving him? He does know that if he doesn’t slow down, he’s going to have a heart attack or worse.

One thing that’s driving him is wanting to be finished with his fucking dissertation. When it’s done, he can relax all he wants. He just hopes he makes it till then.

He can see that he is also going through a profound and disturbing spiritual crisis in his life now, a transformation of the first order. He’s returning to his spiritual roots, long entangled among his psyche’s secret ways. And his body is being overwhelmed trying to bear the stress and strain of these changes. Body’s having trouble blindly following Spirit. Spirit needs to slow down. If this pace continues, body will break down and then Spirit will no longer have a home.

He knows he won’t break down psychologically. He won’t go insane. He has too good a sense of who he is. But, disconnected from his body as he has always been, he’s very vulnerable now.

To survive these stresses, both from his work and from his spiritual changes, he needs to become one with his body. He needs to live so that his body itself has meaning. But how can Spirit give body a dignity that it has lacked till now? All he knows is that he has become the meeting ground for the dark and Druidical Spirit of body and the shining and illuminating Spirit of consciousness.

Suddenly, in the midst of his confusion, an image comes to him. He’s a Bushman. He’s still himself too. But now he’s in touch with the first things, especially with all the animal life within himself. And from here, he can see that Spirit is not at all in opposition to body, as the Christians would have us believe. Spirit is rather what gives meaning to life as a body.

As the Bushman, he sees that body’s not the problem anyway. It’s how he relates to it. Body needn’t break down under the stress of renewing its connection with Spirit. Body already knows, as the Bushmen have always known, that it and Spirit are naturally one. Spirit and its demands are not what is really stressing his body anyway. What is really stressing his body, is him being so fearful and always in his head.
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Scared in the Woods

He and Jonathan and Gypsy are camping out in the woods for the weekend. They just got here. The drive in on that winding and rutted dirt road was really stressful for all of them, and now they’re all resting by the car for awhile, even Gypsy. She’s happy just getting out of the car. Finally though, they can’t put it off any longer, so they load their packs onto their backs and begin hiking along the creek into the woods.

He and Jonathan have never been backpacking before, and it turns out to be much harder than they had thought. After hiking in for maybe half a mile, they decide that they have gone far enough for their first time. They see some trees off to their right. They walk over to check it out. They find a nice, level spot next to the creek for their camp. They take off their packs. They’re home.

They try to fish nearby, but the water’s too low. They’ll look around for some deeper pools in the morning. As the day begins heading towards evening, Jonathan begins nagging him for dinner. But he keeps putting Jon off, suddenly feeling helpless and unsure of himself. He even considers giving up and going home.

Finally though, he rouses himself and builds a good fire and cooks a simple dinner. Now Jonathan’s happy. He feels much better now too; just knowing he was able to do this. Why does he forget?

After dinner, hanging out around their little fire and just beginning to relax, they hear a rifle shot from nearby. It really scares them. What if they shoot this way, not knowing anyone’s here? He’s already scared just being here – scared of the people, the ants, the animals, the strange noises, and especially of being responsible for Jonathan and himself. Jonathan’s scared too, probably affected by his fears.

He goes looking for the hunters, and, when he finds them, he points out where they’re camping and asks them to be careful. The hunters are very aware that he’s scared of them and their rifles. They’re even thinking that they could shoot him and call it a hunting accident. He can see it in their eyes.

Later, in the middle of the night, he dreams he’s going fishing. He asks this young, thin, and very frightened girl if she wants to go with him. She says she would like to but her mother won’t let her. He tells her to ask anyway. He says he’ll even go with her when she goes to ask. She shouldn’t even have to ask really, but she’s so frightened of her mother.

This frightened young girl is a part of himself. She embodies all those fears of the unknown that he has inherited from his parents and their culture. He’s glad he brought her along with him on this camping trip. Maybe it’ll even be healing for her. Maybe now she’ll see there’s nothing to be afraid of.
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Kindergarten

The next morning, while Jon relaxes around camp, he wanders off with Gypsy, looking for somewhere they can fish. He walks a good ways up the creek, but he doesn’t find anything. The entire creek is down to a mere trickle. It has been very dry this year in Southern California, even in these higher mountains.

He soon realizes that he has really been looking for himself anyway. Maybe because Jonathan is camping with him today, he has been more in touch with his inner child. Sitting here alone now, by the side of the creek, still a ways upstream from their camp and Jonathan, he suddenly remembers back to his days in kindergarten. He hasn’t thought about any of this in years! He remembers how they forced him to sit still then. He remembers how angry he became over this, and how scared and impotent he felt too. He couldn’t stop them from forcing him to do what they wanted of him, even though it went completely against his very nature.

He’s getting very upset, remembering all this. He’s crying and feeling angry at the same time. The child within him is crying, and the adult that he is now is extremely pissed that someone would do this to a young boy, would force him to do something he didn’t want to do, would try to break his will really. This is very heavy, but it’s good for him to reconnect to these old feelings now. They’ve long been in the way of him moving ahead in his life.

This is why he has always had so much trouble saying no to others. He can certainly say it to himself. He does it all the time. He finds it so easy to deny himself. This is actually a clear and sure indication of what it means to be overly educated and civilized. In fact, this is the main thing that they teach each and every child as they begin school – how to control themselves, especially how to be able to say no to themselves but never to others.

They certainly don’t do this for the child’s personal or spiritual growth. They do this merely as a means of ensuring that children get along with their fellows and fit more smoothly into their society.

These days, as he changes, he’s returning to an older and more natural way of life. He’s tired of saying no to himself anyway. He doesn’t think he can do it anymore, not after seeing how scared and angry he was when he was that young boy in kindergarten and was asked to go against his very nature. His job now is to heal that side of himself, and he’ll never do this by continuing to say no to himself.
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Dinky Creek

Several weeks ago, he and Karen, along with their friends, Ed and Jovi, decided to go backpacking and do acid together in the mountains. He told them about a place called Dinky Creek in the High Sierras, a place that he had been to once years before.

This will be his second backpacking experience. The one with Jonathan, his first ever, was scary. But it must have been fun enough, because now he wants more.

When they drive up there today, he’s still able to find the old trailhead. But the trail itself has become worn and neglected, and they’re having trouble following it. After awhile, they give up on it and head towards the sound of the creek instead. They have to climb over and under and around a forest of fallen trees to get there, but by sheer luck, they come out of the woods right where Cow and Dinky Creeks meet.

He immediately falls in love with this spot, where these two creeks come together. Inspired by being there, he decides to make it his home. It’s the most beautiful place he has ever been. It’s wooded yet dry like the high desert, with Dinky Creek carving its way down from the higher mountains through a bed of solid and smooth granite. Upstream from their camp, there is even a powerful waterfall crashing down upon a large and very deep pool. Other wonders await, he’s sure.

The myth that is growing into his life, that is now being told through him here at Dinky, is of God separating us humans from the other animals, from our innocence really, so that we can grow and learn, so that we can become conscious of ourselves as separate from Him and His Works. He’s like a Father waiting for His children to grow up and return home, waiting for us to become His worthy companions. And now, with that dangerous angel and his burning sword no longer barring our way, we can finally begin our return.

He decides that he wants to spend the rest of his days living in this beauty. Even thinking about the insane and destructive cities of man sears his soul. Today, wandering about with his friends through this magic at Dinky Creek, walking the creeks, climbing the rocks, and sitting at peace under the wondrous Juniper trees, he has become unafraid of and one with nature for the first time in his life.

He’s going to stay away from cities as much as he can. He will definitely return here this summer whenever he can, as he continues to work on his Ph.D. But the next summer and all the summers after that, when he’s finally finished with school, he’s going to live here all the time. Maybe he can even come here on snowshoes in the winter. And when he can’t be here, he can live somewhere else out in the country, maybe north of San Francisco. He wants to always live somewhere in the woods, either alone or with other high acid people, someplace like Dinky where he can live completely by his own rules.

For later: How to help undo the giant machinery that we have all insanely built over the long centuries – the cities, the highways, and the nations? How to dismantle all this so we can be high and play?

Later on, he’s sitting on top of a giant, flat rock, overlooking the joining of the two creeks as they go off singing together past their camp. It’s dusk now, yet it’s still quite warm. Gypsy’s lying here beside him, chewing on a stick. They are having a wonderful love thing together. She likes being here as much as he does. There were hawks earlier, circling above them. The dancing, singing waters, the tall, beautiful trees reaching to the quiet skies – he’s never had so much.

He’s learning a lot here at Dinky. He and Ed were playing earlier, and he was seeing how easy it is to play here. Everything is so much fun, even the so-called work of gathering firewood, building a fire, and cooking. He’s also learning that a watch is no longer necessary. He can tell time just by the quality of the light, by how bright or dark it is. Whenever he has checked with someone with a watch today, he has always been within a minute or two of clock time.

In his heart, he already lives alongside Dinky Creek. It is his home. He would like to stay here forever. But, imprisoned still by his debts and by his obligations in the city, he knows that he has to return to take care of business. He has thought of just staying at Dinky, of never going back to the city. He knows though, that if he were to do this, He would never gain enough power of his own to stand against the city and its collective head. He has to earn his own freedom. But then, when enough folks have freed themselves, as he’s doing, they can finally shut down the cities behind them as they leave!
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The Magician and the Child

From this high vantage point at Dinky Creek and from his recent dreams and acid trips, he can see that he is moving through a major spiritual transformation, moving towards wholeness of being for the first time in his life.

The inner conflict leading to this transformation and its resolution in wholeness is between the old him – the unconscious Jungian magician, focused upon controlling and knowing – and the newly awakened child within himself, a child who is focused instead upon letting go to life.

The magician within him has always worked from behind the presented persona, from behind the scenes. He is show business, creating illusion in place of reality. This inner magician would ensnare him within endless fantasy. This magician is old hat. Besides, he only does magic. The child is magic.

He is becoming a child again by confronting and overcoming fear in the two worlds, the outer and the inner. He’s doing this in the outer world by earning his Ph.D. and by making enough money to be free. He’s doing this in the inner world by letting go of ego and by allowing for a transforming and centering process.

By achieving his purpose in the outer world, by earning his Ph.D. and a good living, he’s also helping the spiritual transformation that is going on within himself. His work in the outer world does this by helping him to stay grounded in consensual reality and also by giving him a stage upon which he can live out his personal myth.

And by continuing his healing spiritual work with dreams and acid, he’s also helping himself in the world of the city. His work in the inner world does this by helping him to find a balancing center between his inner conflicts and thus freeing energy, previously bound in these conflicts, that he can now use in his outer world endeavors.

He remembers that recent dream, from when he and Jonathan were camping, the dream in which he asked this young girl to go fishing with him – and she was too scared to even ask her mother! If he wants to become a child again instead of always being a magician, he has to first free this frightened young girl from her fearsome and negative mother. If he wants to become a child again, he has to first have a conscious and loving connection with his own inner femininity.
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Indian Ways

The Red Road

He dreams he’s outside, wandering alone through the city. He’s discouraged. He doesn’t think there’s much hope of changing things. He notices though that people are letting the greens in their window boxes grow wilder and are letting their hair grow longer. A voice speaks to him now, saying – “you are turning a surprising number of people red, using your eyes and acid.”

God is telling him that his use of acid, together with his eyes and what folks can see in them, is turning many folks onto the Native American’s Red Road of Life. This may actually be the deeper, more spiritual reason behind his studying eye contact for his doctoral dissertation.

This he swears – the Native American within him will not lose to the White Man. He will not be conquered. He will never come to value the White Man’s destructive ways and forget his own. He decides that he can help this inner Native American by making his own body stronger and by learning to live in the woods as Karen is already doing, by learning which plants are edible and medicinal.

He’s camping alone in the San Gorgonio Mountains of Southern California. He’s doing acid now. He was almost beaten earlier by the ants. Such little things to have almost defeated him. They were all over him, and he just couldn’t relax and be comfortable. He became anxious – antsy.

He remembered though what Karen had said when they were last up at Dinky Creek, that if he ate them instead of fighting them, they’d run away, knowing that he was hunting them rather than warring with them. He ate some, and it worked. They’re giving him space now.

Those people down in their crowded cities are confused and lost; yet somehow they are still able to sense that their way of life is dying, that something new is coming. Because of this, they are loosening up a bit – letting more wildness in their lives and letting their hair grow longer. His dream says that this is so and that he is making a difference, as crazy as those same folks may think he is.

He’s past all that now though, lying here on this big, flat rock, trusting God and asking Him to fill him with strength and love. Suddenly, he has a clear and uncanny vision of Crazy Horse. He’s filled with his image and his presence. Crazy Horse is teaching him a sacred medicine song. He listens, now very high and quite sane.
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Song to the Four Corners

Thank you, Great Spirit of the West –
Of Sun behind Tall, Proud Tree.
Thank you for your hard and thorny strength.

Thank you, Sweet and Dark Spirit of the North –
Of Secret Whispering of Far Away Places.
Thank you for your ears to hear with.

Thank you, Gentle Spirit of the East –
Of Little Sister Tree hidden behind Tall Brother.
Thank you for your warmth, your love
And your gentleness.

Thank you, Great Spirit of the South –
Of Dead Tree, Beautiful in the Sun,
And Little Son, growing in the Proud Shade.
Thank you for your courage
When all ahead is death.

And thank you Little Mother
At the Center of It All.
Thank you for sheltering me today.

Thank you golden and warming sun,
blue skies, green meadows,
tall trees, proud peaks,
This rock I stand upon.
I love you all.
I am one with you today.

Thank you for your hard strength,
Your secret hearing,
Your warm gentleness,
And your courage before death.
Help me to do what I must do in this life.
Help me to be the man I am.
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The White Barbarians

Centuries ago, a horde of white barbarians swamped and eventually destroyed the older and higher cultures existing here on this continent. These barbarians came from Europe and were similar to the Mongol hordes that had swept through Europe itself in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.

When we look at the Mongols and at Hitler and others who have destroyed entire cultures, we do so with horror and disgust.

However, as Europeans in America, we have never turned about and looked at ourselves and at what we have done here. We have never seen the Hitler in ourselves. We have never acknowledged that we too have destroyed a people. Many of us have even blamed the Native American himself for what has been done to him. And even today, he is still being mistreated so that we may continue to deny our collective guilt.

God must have wished for some good to come of this fateful meeting between the peaceful Native American hunter/farmer and the lost and spiritually lonely White Man. Perhaps God wanted all peoples to be at home in nature and to live peacefully in communities as the Native Americans had done. Perhaps God also wanted all of us to have the consciousness of self, separate from the whole, that the White Man had by then attained.

In the various myths of the White Men, God had shut them out of nature, out of the same Garden of Eden that they saw these Native Americans still living within. They became jealous when they first saw this. They destroyed the Indian’s paradise because they had already destroyed theirs.

Unable to live at one with nature, as the Native Americans still could, the Europeans had become isolated wanderers, spiritual seekers, always looking for a way home. However, during this long and often futile search, and because of it too, they had come to a self awareness and strength of will that had been lacking in themselves before they had begun, one that was still lacking in the Native Americans, living innocently with nature and Spirit.

He knows all this. And because of this, he sees the possibility for a healing union, at least within himself, between the European and the Native American. He would be like the Native American, at one with nature and all life. Yet, like the White Man, he would also have his own unique consciousness, forged in the complexities of his own life and way.

He would be both Native American and White Man, his own unique blend, God’s child become a man, God’s partner now in the Work of keeping the world together and evolving.
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Stoned and Clear

He’s back from the mountains, alone now in his room in the city. He has been smoking and meditating all day, and he’s stoned and clear.

He’s thinking about life and death. He’s realizing that when he kills any living being – without first praying, without first realizing his essential identity with the life that he’s about to take – he kills that part of himself too. He kills a part of God really.

God is life – life lived with meaning, in the Tao. God is the life and awareness of all living creatures, of each and every one of us.

Prayer, as used by the Native Americans and the Bushman and other hunting cultures before killing their prey, is done in order to relate correctly to the universe and especially to that part of themselves that is like the prey, so that, when they do kill, they’re not also killing a part of themselves. Killing in itself isn’t what is bad for the hunter. Taking a life only reflects back upon and harms the hunter who is himself living a life without meaning or connection with nature and spirit. Such a life doesn’t deserve that of another.

All of us contain within ourselves the entire universe, not just that tiny and restricted part that has been explored and recognized by the White Man. We must begin to express all of this through our lives. We must begin to plant more gardens – to become gardens ourselves. We must nourish the natural in the world and within ourselves. God doesn’t mind the taking of a life – but He certainly does mind our present culture’s absence of life and its worshipping of death.

This is all so obvious to him, yet no one else seems to see or care. As he continues on his path, he is becoming more and more isolated from his fellows. Only Karen is still following. Without her, he would be very lonely and completely isolated. It’s as Jung says – being yourself is being completely alone, with no one to really share your innermost thoughts and feelings.

He’s becoming isolated because he’s ahead of his time. With the help of acid and the consciousness it engenders, he’s coming to see the world and its problems more clearly, seeing that it is in danger now and needs our loving help. Most people don’t want to focus upon this, would rather focus upon how they can take care of themselves and their own.

However, Mother Earth, our home, is in grave danger, and we will all have to change our lives in order to save her. Most people will resist this call though, not wanting to relate to anything not immediately relevant to their own little lives.
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Mountain Man

Driving up to Dinky the other day, he felt the mountain man within him come alive again. He first felt him as a fear that somehow he would be stopped before he got there – by the police for drugs or by the car breaking down or something. He realized then how badly he needed to get there. In fact, he couldn’t really relax until he had actually crossed over Rock Creek with his pack on his back and was heading up the trail to their camp.

He almost waited too long to return. The mountain man could have died in the city. He did become weak and vulnerable there in the five weeks since he was last here at Dinky. He definitely needs to come here more often.

This time, when he returns to the city, he wants to stay more centered as the mountain man. He wants to be stronger and more able to withstand the frightened and repressive forces within himself that are always trying to keep him from coming back here

He’s realizing also that he has to find his roots from among his own ancestors. He’s not an American Indian. Although he does feel spiritually close to them, he can’t just take on their trip. It doesn’t quite fit him. To find his own way to Mother Nature, he has to reconnect with his own primitive ancestors, with those free souls who roamed about – from Russia, through Europe, to Scotland and Ireland, and finally to here in America. To do this, he has to go back in time, past history even, back to the beginnings of the Celts and the Gypsies and all those other wanderers and weirds in his blood.

While sitting above the creek meditating, he suddenly has a powerful vision. In it, he’s on a steep mountain cliff, on a ledge. He’s very high up yet completely unafraid. He jumps to the ledge below him, and, facing the sheer rock wall, he notices a root growing out of the crack before him. He grabs it, and, when he does, a door opens in the wall.

He goes inside and asks for Great Grandfather. He says, “Come out and speak with me.” Great Grandfather comes out. He’s tall, thin, dark-haired, and looks as if he has spent his entire life out of doors. His eyes look as if they are used to seeing vast distances.

“Who are you?” He asks. Grandfather doesn’t answer. He asks again. He tells Grandfather that he wants to share his life with him. Again Grandfather doesn’t answer. He realizes now that he doesn’t need an answer. He can see who Grandfather is. He can feel his powerful energy. He walks towards him now, and, as they embrace, they finally become one.

He leaves the cave now, carefully closing the door behind him, and then slides down the steep slope to the waiting lake below – to baptism and rebirth!