Encounters with Power: Adventures and Misadventures on the Shamanic Path of Healing - José Luis Stevens 2017
Encounters with the Power of Aborigines and Songlines Down Under: Or “When the Student Is Not Ready”
Expression—Storyteller-Artist
In October 1998, I had the unique opportunity to go to the outback of central Australia with a group of mixed professionals to visit Aborigines of the Pitjantjatjara tribe. These are people who have been particularly willing to dialogue with outsiders and share their culture and stories. This is the story of my journey and what I learned in that magical and powerful land. Some of it you may find entertaining while other parts of it are unsettling and deeply revealing about human nature and how personality obstacles operate under stress. I have deliberately changed the names of the characters in the story out of respect for the aboriginal people and the professionals’ desire to keep certain aspects secret. You will soon learn why.
The trip was to be a meeting of cultures: twelve business consultants to Fortune 500 companies and government departments, keynote speakers, and heavyweights in their fields meeting with aboriginal singers and keepers of the dreamtime songs. The dreamtime is considered by the Aborigines to be the deeper reality behind the world of appearances. For them, specific songs stretch across thousands of miles, embedded in the land itself, narrating the ancient events that have taken place in each location, carrying their significance and meaning. The aboriginals are the carriers of these songs and by singing them they hold the land in balance.
Six women and six men, Americans and Australians, convened at Uluru (Ayers Rock) in the deep red desert of the outback to meet one another and their guides and watch the crimson sunset from the comfort of a balcony in the resort hotel. Included in the group were an internationally recognized economist, six authors, nationally known speakers, two Jungian analysts, an educational specialist, and various business consultants. Joining us were specialists on Pitjantjatjara culture, a translator, guides, drivers, and cooks. We were warned that where we were going there would be primitive facilities, dangerous snakes, and an aboriginal culture so different from our own that, to enter into a dialogue with the indigenous people, we would have to leave behind all expectations and belief systems.
Exhausted from travel and suffering from jet lag, we slipped off to bed after brief introductions. Early the next morning, with some members of the group outfitted with sparkling new and clean desert attire and makeup, we climbed aboard two large four-wheel-drive trucks, outfitted as people and gear carriers, that looked like they meant business. For hours we bounced over the rutted desert roads leading to the deep outback, horizons stretching away in every direction, the flat landscape dotted with shrubs, gum trees, and the occasional rock outcropping. A brief stop for lunch revealed the first dawning reality of what we were in for: a gum tree forest with flies so thick in the heat of October that we had to eat the sandwiches flies and all. Nervous laughter and fly jokes sputtered among the august group, and with much relief we resumed the journey. The landscape transformed into low rocky mountain ranges and a harsh but colorful desert dotted with spring wildflowers. Large lizards continually crossed the road ahead and feral camels could be spotted among the low trees. The travelers got a chance to converse and get to know one another a bit during the long and dusty ride.
We were tired and gritty from the day’s travel, and the new clothes had an even newer layer of red dust and wrinkles. Sweat stained the armpits, hat brims, and collars of many. The neat fabric of Western sophistication was already beginning to fray.
Here for the first time we met our hosts, the aboriginal Pitjantjatjara tribal members who had gathered to meet us at a special place in the dreaming, the songline that this particular “mob” was responsible for keeping alive. Mob is the term they themselves use to describe their tribe. They were a dark-skinned people in filthy rags with hair that looked like it had never been washed. Their bare, leathery feet padded about the red earth like gnarled tree roots, making no sound. With bright smiles and warm eyes filled with vitality, they shook our hands. Here we were, twelve Western professionals awkwardly gaping at a ragged, disheveled, and filthy-looking band of Aborigines whose trash littered the ground all around us.
What were we going to do here anyway? How could we possibly bridge the overwhelming chasm between our cultures? One part of me was appalled by these people squatting in the dirt. What was I doing here? Another part of me knew instinctively that these dark people possessed a knowledge so deep, basic, and natural that by comparison our group might as well have been a test-tube creation of left-brained Western science.
After dinner we travelers discussed how we would bridge the gap between us and “them.” As a group of professional facilitators, we were good at faux-sharing our feelings and covertly sliding our brilliant observations and insights to impress one another and make points, Western style. The indigenous people just stared at us out of the darkness, watching our council meeting with inscrutable intent.
That night we slept in swags, Australian outback canvas sleeping bags, out under the phenomenal Southern Cross, Magellanic gas clouds, and a Milky Way I had never seen so clearly before. A powerful cold wind whipped up the dust and disturbed our sleep, creating fitful dreams and bringing in the sounds of distant baying dingoes.
The next day we gathered for morning news, an aboriginal tradition focusing on dreams of the night before. We were going to see if our individual dreams might also be collective and speak of our group’s relationship to this place. The first dreams were disturbing and indicated conflict and lack of integration. We met with aboriginal elders who spoke of their difficulties: alcoholism, drug abuse, petrol sniffing, and the violence that had all but destroyed aboriginal culture in recent years. As we looked about, we saw no one between fifteen and fifty. Those in the middle generation were all dead, jailed, or living in the slums of the big coastal cities. Great-grandparents were raising the young children, like in the ghetto communities of the United States. Yet there was hope. These children would have the probability of becoming men and women of high degree, carriers of the ancient knowledge — or maybe not if they elected the course their parents followed.
Later that day we walked to a spring in the rocky ridge above camp, a hole in the rock where a solitary pool of water rested overlooking the dry surrounding outback. Lester, an old aboriginal shaman responsible for this site on the songline, told us the story as the old women sang fragments of the story, accompanied by click sticks. This was the site where a great lizard, Kilanta, lay crouched in the time of the ancestors while he contemplated stealing the wonderful stone used by the people in the nearby village for grinding their grain to make bread. He could tell by its sound that the stone was a very fine one and would serve him well if he could just snatch it while they were not looking. Being a shape changer, he began devising ways he could trick the people in order to steal their grinding stone.
Now this episode is only a tiny fragment of a much greater storyline about Kilanta and his adventures that stretch along a songline for thousands of miles across Australia. The many adventures of Kilanta are invisibly written in the rock, the outcroppings, and the caves across the land. These adventures must be told and retold, sung and resung, and in this way they remain alive to teach ongoing generations of people how to live — and how not to. They are sung by the ancestors embedded in the land through the voices of countless generations, bringing them together across time and space. These are the creation stories sung by the land through the voice of the people.
Back in council, the fabric of our little group began to rip apart. Some members complained that they wanted more contact, more discussion with the indigenous people, but expressed frustration that they didn’t know how to bring that about. Our translator, a woman, told us we would have to wait, that the indigenous people needed us to live with the land for a time before we could understand anything about them. Members of the group were impatient and there were grumblings. One prima donna in her fifties, a consultant to the U.S. military, could be overheard complaining to others that to sit and wait was not what she came for. She began to show signs of stress and carved out familiar territory, grumbling among the women and complaining that the men were more vocal, running the show, and that the women were somehow getting a raw deal. Some women found themselves caught in the middle, wanting to be on her good side but not quite agreeing. Their makeup was beginning to look smudged and out of place in this raw land of termite mounds, red dirt, and sharp spinifex grass.
The dreams recounted at the morning news session were worrisome. Rain spattered on us as, one by one, members of the group told of headless bodies and other uncomfortable motifs springing up in the night. We discovered from our Australian guides that decapitation is a major theme in the outback. Many white explorers have lost their heads both figuratively and physically over the centuries. Some have been rendered stark raving mad after attempting to cross the outback, and others have been found literally headless, their lifeless bodies sprawled among the carnage of their expedition gear. Had we begun losing ours in some way too? I thought so.
One day the Western women set off to do what the aboriginal women called women’s business and left with the translator and the ragged children in tow. We men remained at camp to pursue men’s business with our male hosts but with no translation for the day. We might have taken part in a kangaroo hunt, but the women had taken all the vehicles to look for good places to dig honey ants in the bush.
We men gathered with the old ones and noticed that all of us came alive upon being alone together. The old ones immediately began to fashion us red headbands out of woolen yarn to match their own. These signified men’s initiation work, and we discovered that these aboriginal elders had taken time out from their important initiation ceremonies with their young men to spend some time with us and make us feel included. We were quite touched and felt a kinship with them. This was beginning to be fun.
The elders taught us the dances of the emu and the powerful dance of the eagle. Over and over we swooped and dove to the sounds of the clicking sticks, and then with a mighty pounce each of us in turn snatched up a rabbit in our talons. We danced, we laughed, we bonded through elation in the smoke of the fire in the middle of a vast land that was beginning to feel strangely like home. The old men’s eyes glittered and they spoke in broken English with great warmth. We sat in the dirt in the rain and watched the elders make ceremonial objects.
One man in our group, an old friend of mine, had an illness. He had not been helped by Western medicine and had nearly died during the past year. He requested help from one of the elders, a man of high degree who we had been informed was a healer. Together Kevin and I sat on the earth amid the rubbish of their camp. Frank, an old man with a gray beard, a tattered cowboy hat, and greasy shirt and pants, bade Kevin to take off his shirt so he could examine the problem area. We tried to explain to him that Kevin had had problems with hemorrhaging in the head. I wondered what Frank knew already and what he could see. He was not my picture of a healing shaman, but then when have my Hollywood expectations ever been accurate? Scattered raindrops smacked on our faces and upon Kevin’s shirtless Irish white body.
Frank began to massage Kevin’s neck, deeply penetrating with gnarled, calloused fingers. His hands massaged expertly into the left side of the neck and down the left arm. He said that the problem was there and he indicated in sign language that he wanted to know what happened to Kevin’s left shoulder and arm. Kevin thought for a while and then, with a look of surprise, revealed that as a small child he was left-handed but his school teacher had caned his left hand so hard that he couldn’t use it anymore, forcing him to become right-handed. Out here in the outback, Down Under, an old black man unraveled the pain and insanity of a barbaric twentieth-century Western custom. Frank said there was no bad spirit left in there and that it just needed some more healing. He pulled out something bad from the shoulder with his hands, left the circle, and cast it out into the bush.
He returned to massage Kevin’s neck and shoulder once more. He said he would do more the following day, ending the session. Kevin was beaming. With a broad grin he excitedly exclaimed, “I’ve made contact! I’ve made contact!” And truly he had. I felt the same.
At the end of the day the women returned in a swirl of dust. They had been involved in women’s business. They seemed tired and not too happy. Their clothes and bodies were dirty and they didn’t have much makeup left. Truth was beginning to reveal their inside state. They saw the men’s beaming faces, and several of them demanded to know what we had been doing. We tried to tell them and some of them seemed very put out. Later we found out they had spent the day with screaming children, digging three-foot-deep holes and looking for a few honey ants without much success. The honey ants are a treat, their large abdomens filled with a sweet nectar that can be sucked out. These corporate women had been faced with aboriginal women’s work and some of them did not like it at all. They were sure that the men were experiencing something much better, much more important. One of them demanded to see the headman so she could get equal time with him. He was gracious enough to oblige her and spent some time talking to her and several of the women.
At sunset we men were led into the bush. A cold wind was blowing but we were asked to take off our shirts, and one by one the old men painted our bodies with white stripes and dots. They put leaves into our red headbands and chanted prayers as we were transformed into eagles. We emerged from the bush in a long line and performed the dances we had been taught in front of the women and children assembled around a roaring campfire. We became emus; we became eagles. I have never felt so much like an animal. The prayers, the dances, the ceremony of painting were all working. We felt like men and yet we felt like animals of the land and sky. The dances were sacred, and we were in awe. That night around the campfire we men spoke warmly and openly about our feelings for the land, its magic, and ourselves.
The morning news continued to reveal fragments of unsettling dreams that spoke of trouble in our band. That day we traveled by truck along the songline, stopping at sacred spots to hear more of the story of Kilanta and his ancient travels across this part of central Australia. At each site the Pitjantjatjara sang the song to us and to the land. We saw how the lizard man hid in a cave to avoid detection by the villagers he had stolen from. We heard how he cleaned his beard on the cliff face and vomited up boulders after greedily eating too much in celebration of his theft. Finally, we crawled into his belly, a sacred cave perched high up on a cliff face decorated with art left by generations of people over thousands of years. From the cave, the plain spread before us to the horizon, a beautiful land inviting us to walk out into it.
The songlines and the sacred sites along it evoked powerful emotions and reactions. I felt a strange sadness at the cave, and at our lunch stop I intuitively walked out into the bush where kangaroo, dingo, camel, and emu tracks crisscrossed the baked mud like a mosaic between the termite mounds. I found a huge gum tree and stood under it, looking up at its thick, fragrant branches. I asked it to help me feel more at peace, joyful, and connected. Hearing voices, I wandered over to where Mary, a vivacious aboriginal woman, was digging furiously into the earth searching for honey ants. Her small niece was observing her, and some members of our group were standing nearby taking pictures of her. After a few minutes she handed me a shovel and pointed for me to dig. I labored in the hot sun for a time and then she indicated for me to stop. She reached carefully down with a twig and began to pull out dozens of fat honey ants. Again she dug, burrowing deep into the earth, dirt flying in every direction until, stopping suddenly, she repeated her pattern and pulled out more honey ants. How she knew where they were and when to stop digging I could not fathom. The honey ants piled up in my handkerchief like a mound of gold. We indulged ourselves with a few and then triumphantly carried the rest back to where everyone was just finishing lunch, just in time for dessert.
The aboriginal people grinned broadly at me as I distributed Mary’s honey ants, and the rest of our crew shared in the treasure, laughing and slurping. I felt wonderfully connected and then remembered my prayer at the big gum tree and was dumbstruck at the sequence of events. I realized the magic and sacredness of this land. Honored land that is sung to responds quickly and powerfully. In the evening some of us shared our experiences of the day around the campfire. I related my story, and Kevin spoke eloquently about the power he felt in the land, its great beauty, and his awe of it. We had long moments of pregnant silence that we savored in one another’s company. I slept under the stars that night, understanding why I had come so far to be here.
But all was not well. Deep, disturbing currents were flowing through elements of our group. The dreams of decapitation revealed a growing rift in our band. At the morning news, it erupted. Kevin, a world-renowned economist and consultant to governments, questioned why we must keep processing the dynamics of our group so much and talking so much. He wanted to be more silent and experience the land and its people more.
In a torrent of venom, one woman viciously attacked him as representing male domination and insensitivity. With much anger she stated that the land was sad, used up, and violated and that there was nothing to gain here. She did not share the joy and the connection of the night before and was furious and unwilling to participate with the group any longer. She went on to attack Kevin’s character in a way that left the group stunned and horrified. This woman, well respected in the business world, an author and speaker, had behaved in an uncivilized and atrocious way. We experienced the verbal rape of one of our members and all of us felt abused. The fragile coalition was torn asunder as various men and women in turn stomped off or limped away to lick their wounds.
This group of savvy professional Westerners, espousing the latest theories of cooperation and communication, facilitators of the largest and most powerful corporations on earth, had come apart in conflict and hate. A pall settled over the camp as small knots of former group members whispered together about what had happened and whether there was any way to mend the rip in our community. The Jungians among us proposed that perhaps we were being affected by the dream lines and the songline at this particular place. They suggested that powerful forces were exerting their influences and that we might not be able to explain these events as reactions to simple personal differences. The Australian guides were appalled at the rift between male and female among the Americans and could not understand the depth of rage in the vociferous woman and her supporters. They said they had never seen such anger over such little provocation.
The next day it was time for the women to learn dances and present for the men. Only three of the Western women participated because of the painful and awkward conflict that had arisen. To perform this honey ant dance, it was necessary for the women to bare their breasts, and this was the last straw for three of the women, who refused to participate. So much for the exchange of cultures! The three willing women spent the afternoon ceremonially preparing their bodies. They were accepted into the womb of a canvas tent where they were anointed and fussed over by the elder women. Later these women said it was like coming home to family.
When the men assembled by the fire for the dance, the women, accompanied by an elder, lined up facing the men. They were so painted and decorated that they had lost their individual identities and were totally transformed into honey ants. The other women of the group were nowhere to be seen. The dance was so gentle, so poignant, so beautiful that we men were moved to tears. These women made themselves vulnerable in a way that began to heal some of the wounds of the morning.
Early the next morning we bid our farewell to the Pitjantjatjara, exchanging gifts and smiles. We had connected with them, but at a price. They had suffered out here in this rough land and so had we. They felt the pain of our group but could not heal it. We could not heal it either. Our expectations for talks were not met but we had learned something else, something deeper about ourselves through this land and its people. I looked around at our sunburned faces, our dirty clothes, our disheveled appearance. In a few days we had begun to look more like our hosts. Gone were the polish, the professional veneer, and the pride of a false personality, replaced by a soberness, a more reality-based look.
The truck carried us several hours away to a new encampment, a different songline, and we met the tribal keepers of this land. We walked the land, watched the sunrises and sunsets, listened to the parakeets chirping, and watched them as they flew in great flocks around the rare water holes in the rocks. Parrots and spinifex doves wheeled about the stunning landscape, creating an ever-changing panorama in the sky. Once again we listened to the songs and tales of the land and were stunned, for here was the site of the Seven Sisters songline, the story of the Pleiades.
It was the story of a big, dark, ugly man who was hopelessly attracted to seven beautiful sisters. He followed them over the land, hoping to catch them and have intercourse with them. Being a shape shifter, he was able to disguise himself as a rock or a plant in order to sneak up on them. However, the oldest sister was so perceptive that she always spotted him and led her sisters to safety in the nick of time. This big ugly man had a regular penis and in addition he had a huge, long penis that he wrapped around his waist many times. This long penis had a mind of its own and could unravel at will, darting out to penetrate one of the seven sisters unexpectedly, even when he was not planning to. He tried to get rid of it because of its unruly nature and because it scared the sisters away, but to no avail. Eventually the wayward penis attacked the youngest sister, raped her, and killed her, to the horror of everyone. Her six sisters accompanied her to the sky, where they became the seven stars of the Pleiades. According to the story, the long penis in pursuit of the sisters became Orion’s belt and is still following them.
We visited an ancient sacred cave filled with paintings depicting the story I’ve just retold. The women in our group revealed pain at hearing the story and seeing the images while the men were fascinated with the story and the cave. In the evening several women revealed that they had been raped earlier in their lives.
We pondered whether visiting this songline had precipitated the deep conflict in our group and the intense, unprovoked anger toward the men. Perhaps we were entering the story written in the land and playing it out in some unconscious way. Whatever the case, our rift could not be healed at this time. We met as a group during a fiery Australian sunset and tried hard to make peace with the angry women, to try to look at the anger and understand it, but we could not. The attempt failed utterly and the author and public speaker, the human development specialist, remained grimly silent, unable or unwilling to engage in any kind of healing dialogue.
Although this saddened the rest of our group, we were able to look at one another — dirty, ragged, smoke stained, and wind burned — and see greater depth than before. We looked better than when we had first met, eyes glittering, vitality exuding, mouths smiling. We were about to go home having been initiated, rendered more compassionate, transformed in ways beyond our understanding. We had gone through hardship and emotional strain, had old wounds opened by this land and its people. We were sobered and humbled and the emperor’s clothes were strewn across the landscape.
These thought leaders (or perhaps thoughtless ones) had arrived competitive and prideful, filled with silly expectations, and we had utterly failed our mission. What we gained was immeasurably more valuable — we were humbled, and these ragged unwashed people had taught us deeply in nonintellectual ways. They could not fix us and we could not fix them. They have terrible problems to overcome if they are to survive as a race. Yet their problems, however difficult, are not more challenging than the ones we faced. We were unable to make it through a week without a social meltdown. What does that say for our communities and society? What does that say about our leaders?
When we returned to Uluru I walked around but did not climb it out of deference for the Aborigines who requested that we not do so. For them it is a great power place. I could feel that it was. It is the apu, to use a term from the Quechua language of the Incas: the guardian for all the outback, the aboriginal lands. Since the white man came and turned it into a tourist attraction, it has been somewhat desecrated, not unlike what has happened to Mount Everest. The Aborigines have suffered, but they await the time when they can have it back. Perhaps then their situation will shift for the better.
Upon returning home I had much to ponder, much to understand about the relationships between the masculine and the feminine. Since the songlines are thousands of years old, the rift between the masculine and feminine is very old as well. These songlines are meant as teaching songs. Lizard man is each of us, whether male or female. He is our lower nature, our simian nature. The seven sisters are the seven chakras connected to our higher nature. The lower nature attempts to bring down the higher nature and sometimes succeeds, but not completely or forever. All we have to do is look up into the sky and recall the story to remind us of this. Lizard man may catch one of us once in a while, but according to the story he does not catch all of us. Therein lies our salvation.
I now look at the Aborigines from Australia in a very different light because they revealed themselves to me through their songs, through their wisdom, through the grubs they shared with me, and through their patience with us. I am so blessed.
POSTSCRIPT
It has been some years since this trip. Sometimes I catch my travel companions in the news plying their trade. Except for Kevin, my old soul friend, I don’t know how they have evolved. That is not for me to judge. Some were ready to heal and some were not. I still regard this trip as one of the signature events of my life.
Sometimes a bid for power will strip off your pretty clothes and set you naked in the elements where the truth can be seen. Resistance is futile but at the time it seems like a safe option. Acceptance is the only way through, although it may look like weakness to others. Don’t take it personally. It is their own fear of being weak being projected onto you.
Never accept appearances. That lesson keeps popping up over and over in these stories. I guess it is one I need to learn big time.
QUESTIONS
Have you ever gone into something with high expectations only to have the situation melt down and become a kind of disaster? If so, who did you blame? Yourself? Others? Did you learn anything? From your perspective, did you emerge more powerful or not?