I’ve decided there is something Shamanic about suffering. The past few years have been challenging for me in a very specific way: whenever I have approached an important event, particularly one where I have to ‘perform’ well, in a dramatic or ritualistic way… I get slightly ill.
This is not stage-fright. Apart from the odd deep breath, I just get on with it, trusting that the kind fates and the momentum of experience will see it done well. It matters to me that it is done well…
Last year’s vivid ‘Leaf and Flame’ workshop for the Silent Eye’s spring weekend was a classic example. I had a particularly demanding role as Sir Gawain in an enhanced version of the Green Knight story. What few of the rest of the group knew was that, for the duration of the weekend, I was on a strong dose of penicillin for a chest infection.
Stuart and Sue had given their all to create a ritual drama that was ground-breaking and I was not about to let them down. The event went well, though my ‘ghostly’ appearance at the end of Gawain’s ordeals may have had a dual cause.
I will not dwell on further details of this recurring syndrome, other than to say that this has been a repeating pattern for many years. Generally, I’m a very well and fit person. These ‘events of adversity’ may well originate within my self, however unconsciously. They have much to teach me about an internal state that needs to have ‘earned’ the upcoming bounty; that needs to find itself deserving of the gateway that may lie ahead, as child Jerome was, on the morning when he awoke, still alive and now turned away from death – and thereby pointed at a life finally protected by a (Masonic) brotherhood that loved him.
Sue Vincent's Daily Echo 