Quantum Shaman: The Love Affair With the Unknown

While glancing over an old forum I moderated several years back, I came across this entry from 2007 - one year after the death of my mother. Since time marches by so quickly - well, not really by us as much as it marches over us - I had forgotten ever having written it. Upon reading it, I realized it still has relevance - perhaps not just to myself, but to anyone who has ever fallen in love with the unknown, to anyone who has ever taken time to reflect not only on where we have been, but where we are going.

Just a brief bit of background... My mother's name was Ruby, and she was considered by most to be a simple woman - generally happy and content, never complaining even when it might have been to her advantage to do so. She passed away on October 4, 2006, from colon cancer.

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October 4, 2007

It was a year ago tonight that my mother died.

I look at those words hanging in cyberspace, and ask myself if it is possible to even wrap my mind around such a thing. And at the same time, I *see* that it is such a simple thing that no understanding is possible, and perhaps not even desirable. Death simply is.

So as I sit here at my desk in the early morning stillness, I am comparing what I know now to what I knew a year ago at this time, and I find that not a lot has changed, yet everything has changed. And again, there is a peculiar sense of juxtaposition. I ask myself questions which are perhaps nothing more than markers on the hem of time. Was I happier then or now? Have I accomplished my goals for the tonal in this past year? Have I moved forward in my love affair with the nagual (the unknown)? Do I know anymore about myself than I did a year ago? Do I know anymore about this thing called death? Do any of us know anything about anything, or are we all just madly jabbering corpses who haven't yet fallen into our crypts?

Perhaps the most important thing about these time markers is that they compel us to reflect. And what I am seeing, generally, in my reflections this morning, is that I am essentially content, even "happy" (whatever that might mean) with regard to my path. And yet... there's that juxtaposition again. At the same time, my eye is drawn to those areas where I see work being required, and to the changes I would hope/need to make. There are those who would say that I tend to focus on the negative - but I have never really seen it that way. To me, attempting to sweep the negative under the rug only makes for a lump in the rug. So when I see areas where improvement is needed, I take on a warrior-stalker's perspective and begin to examine what is perceived to be "wrong" so that I might have a better opportunity of making it "right".

Lest anyone think I'm talking about changing the world, curing cancer or solving terrorism and global hunger, allow me to assure you that I am talking only about matters of Spirit - for ultimately it is the assemblage point of the self which determines our experience of the world.

So is it, then, a matter of simply moving the assemblage point into some "happy space", so as to experience only the so-called "positive" aspects of the world? Though there are many who might think so, that has not been my experience. To me, that only makes that lump under the rug grow larger and eventually one trips over it while ambling along skyclad with only rose-colored glasses for attire.

One thing my mentor-double, Orlando, has stressed emphatically over the years is the need to be *able* to ask the next question. Sounds simple. But something I have really observed over this past year is that most folks simply are not capable of thinking for themselves beyond the rudimentary levels of being able to feed themselves and tie their shoes in the morning. I've tested this with quite deliberate intent over the past year, sometimes even on this forum, by asking questions which require not a recitation of some rote memorization, but would require actual forward-thinking - which, to me, is one of the major cornerstones for the foundation of any evolution of consciousness.

Ask the next question. "When you find yourself at a crossroads in the jungle, the direction in which you proceed may not always be defined by the head, but far more often from the heart. What is your heart telling you now? What do you want to do? What would you change if you could?" Orlando's words to me, less than a month ago.

What's amusing is that the questions themselves usually reveal far more than we might realize at first glance. When my heart is telling me something, it is usually because I may not be particularly content with whatever is going on at the moment. When I ask myself what I want to do, the question itself reveals to me that perhaps some sort of change is not only desirable, but may be required in order for me to move forward. When I ask myself what I would change if I could... the implication is that the status quo may not be satisfactory... and so I must ask the next question...

What is the desired outcome and how might I best move toward that goal? Not with the head, but with the heart.

I look back on my mother's life. Simple things brought her the most pleasure. Raking leaves in her yard. Playing her organ for no one but herself and her dog. Savoring some chocolate thing. She once said that she never had any big dreams and so she never had any big disappointments.

When I think about that, I know it was her own philosophy of the right way to live. Whenever I would ask her about her philosophical beliefs, she would tell me that she placed her faith in God, and left the power-thinking to the pastors and priests and spiritual leaders of the world.

That, of course, is where we differed. And though we both came to be comfortable with that difference, I find that my own questions are not as easily answered. The only god I know is me, and the only faith I have ever known to be founded is the faith I place in myself. And as lonely as it may sound to some, I have truly found that it is a solitary path - a universe of one, yet a universe filled with all possibility, and that it is in asking the next question that we determine which of those possibilities we will fore to go through the motions of actually occurring.

What do I want to do now? When I look at the question with the right eye of the consensual world, there is no single answer that resonates. Many things. No one thing. When I look at the question from the left eye of the Spirit, however, I am immediately filled with a sense of magnificent exhilaration - the way one typically feels when anticipating a long-awaited consummation of a grand love affair. "Tonight is the night," the unseen muse whispers from the sharp edge of a shadow. "Tonight is the night when we will dance the stardust into manifestation and sing the spirit alive."

What I have come to realize is that every night is the night. And though the muse can never be caught, the love affair is in the chase and the unwritten steps of the dance, and the barely heard music of the nagual's one man band.

The magic is in the magician.

What do I want to do? Only that. Yet there is no defining "that". There is only the experience of it... the voice calling your name in a crowd, but when you turn to look, no one's there. The caress of a seductive hand at 3 am, but when you turn to embrace your lover, you find he has taken a step sideways in space/time, and all that remains is the sensation of having been touched by something other, something beyond the realm of human understanding. The scent of cologne - fresh and clean - in a room that has been unoccupied for months. Footprints in desert sand that lead to the middle of nowhere, and then abruptly and inexplicably stop.

The love affair with the nagual, the unknown, the unknowable.

Looking back on the events since the death of my mother, I find that virtually everything we engage in is folly. Perhaps it's a bit amusing to discover that what is the most real to me is what would be considered the most unreal by most allegedly "sane", normal human beings. But that's okay, too. When sanity is measured by the average human being, I am delighted to be considered mad.

And at least I think I have a somewhat better perspective on the next question. What do I want to do now?

The love affair with the unknown. There is nothing else. I do not believe there ever was.

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