Manuel is speaking, but he’s wrong…
This thought hits home as my unseen flight ends with a trip over the ledge that marks the boundary of a small incline. Ahead of me, the tourists turn and politely ignore the unhurt figure in the dust, though others are laughing.
What was it that Jerome had said? ‘Shamanic methods are ultimately kind…’ The exactness of that hits home, and with it comes a realisation that the Shamanic world – really the objective world seen by the Shaman – is brutally centred in the now, but has an implicit trust in the motives, or rather, direction, of that living wave of Creation.
Conventional ‘goodness’ has nothing to do with it, though individual kindness does. Perhaps this is one of the secrets: that the true Shaman can swim skillfully enough in that flow to create a little eddy, a safe-moment, in which to slow the drowning of another?
Reality has a hard edge; this I know from years of practical and spiritual experience, and that is why a moment with a Shaman is unnerving… they don’t have a heartbeat to waste. This shifting plane of water is full of drowning people…
Mistakes are fine – even wonderful, if you see them as signposts and don’t sulk in the face of this tidal flow.
Manuel pauses while I pull myself to dusty knees and pretend I’m okay.
Sue Vincent's Daily Echo 