In 1999 I took a break from the tail end of my
marriage in Eugene to attend the 3HO Summer Solstice gathering in New Mexico hoping
to find guidance towards my destiny.
During a 31-minute tantric exercise, with our
hands held two feet apart facing each other, I imagined seeing each place I
wanted to live between my hands. My home state was a pattern of unwelcoming,
clear-cut forests. Los Angeles, where I have friends and family, appeared as an
image of traffic and concrete. But on placing Espanola between my hands I was
enraptured by the sight of an emerald island teeming with life and beauty. At
the end of Solstice, as I was leaving the site, a woman offered me a job
assisting in her Espanola home daycare, confirming this choice of havens.
It was an expensive move. I temporarily lived
in a Eugene ashram home while I tied up loose ends teaching some prescheduled
Golden Temple and Kundalini Yoga workshops at the local college and hoped to
rent a truck for the drive. I would not have enough money to pay these bills.
Robert Brothers came to my rescue! He is the PhD,
Rip Van Winkle-like bright-eyed tree saver I met on a bus trip a few years ago.
Months later I gave him a Sahaj healing session, where he appeared as a
beautiful Oak tree, full of life, being mercilessly chopped down. Because of
his loving, protective reach in this lifetime for natural habitat, and for me, I
call him my Chindoa Tree.
Before leaving Oregon, my Chindoa Tree and I
attended a magical Rainbow Family retreat at Trillium Farm near Atherton, where
we enjoyed sadhana by a pond, did the Golden Temple journey in a teepee, and
whole families walked about half dressed or less in the sun in a gentle
ambiance between workshops, meals, and a bazaar beneath the trees.
Wind Mountain Friends
When I reached Espanola, it struck me that I
knew at least fifty people by name, having met them over the last thirty years
at Solstices, Women's Camps or as acquaintances from ashram communities in Los
Angeles, San Diego, the San Francisco Bay Area and Oregon. Feeling out of touch
none-the-less, I invited about a dozen ladies to visit Wind Mountain with me
for an Inipi ceremony with Thomas One Wolf. His land fronted the sacred Sangre
de Cristo mountains just outside of Taos, not too far to drive for a day trip.
About six of us piled into one car, drove for an hour and bumped along the dirt
road leading into the heart of Wind Mountain, past a scattering of summer homes
of well-to-do Hollywood yoga students.
Thomas One Wolf's land contained a natural
amphitheater overlooking the mountain prairie where talented residents acted
out their own plays. There was also a teepee for meetings, a blanket-covered
Inipi and Thomas and Sherrie's cozy home.
I had taken Waheguru Singh there after our
marriage a few years earlier. It was a way of meeting friends, heart to heart,
in a sacred, natural environment.
Thomas's wife, Sherrie, led our Inipi
Ceremony, with gentle understanding of womanly needs. She admitted that for her
family the ceremony was wordless, powerful, and deeply understood. Our version
was profound for us; enduring the heat of the people stones, forced us within,
and our neuroses and toxins out, mildly so.
We climbed up the slope with Sherrie
afterwards to her home for lunch and some pleasant conversation, and were
surprised to find Papa there. Papa was the elderly, ceremonial head of the Taos
Pueblo whom had adopted Thomas to give him a Pueblo home in New Mexico.
Papa sat on a comfortable lounge chair, seemingly
sleeping. But Sherrie and Thomas acted concerned. Papa often left his body and
had a hard time returning--They were worried that he might not come back. So we
started massaging Papa to stimulate his earthly presence. Sharie said it was
the only thing that worked! But I also silently chanted to Guru Ram Das.
When Papa opened his eyes, we excitedly asked, "Where did you go?" was intriguing to us that he had out-of-the-body
experiences. He replied, his eyes twinkling, "My power mountain. I always go
the same place."
I promised to give Papa a picture of the
Golden Temple, another precious place of great power. Papa was politely
grateful, but the photograph never reached him. As imagined, one day he
journeyed to his beloved mountain and chose not to return.
