'Everything in me knew I was dying. Memories of my life started flooding by. I realized in that moment how much I loved. Loved my dear ones, the earth, this life. So much time had been wasted in fear!  I started a ritual and invited everyone to say 'I love you'. I shared everything else that needed to be shared'.
At the point of near death the veils are lifted. You suddenly see, know, are. Things that you have been closing your eyes for all your life suddenly become crystal clear.  For instance: your mission in life, love, how to live together with all these people on our beautiful Earth.

 

When the Christian church started portraying death as something outside of you, which decided for you whether it would be heaven or hell, depending on past actions,  they stole something essential from us: the potency of this moment near death.

On a global scale, we see that now our Earth is endangered, younger generations feel this Near Death and for many an inner knowing opens. Questions that the generations before them couldn't solve suddenly find their answers. Like the great shift in our economy from the profit model to the sharing model. Like healing the mother daughter split and finding a loving mutually supporting relation between the generations and between the sexes. Like restoring some of the myriad ways of connecting between us. I suddenly began to understand the shifts happening around us when I realized we are in a global Near Death Experience.

In a shamanic culture, we don't wait until the Edge is Looming Up. We have developed the sacred art to call in this experience at any time. For we know that we need Death to keep adapting. We call in Death within the loving and wise container of a Shaman. On a group scale in rituals like Sun Dance, where people dance for days on end, without breaks, carrying a heavy stone sewn to their body. Every step tears open the skin further...  From your comfortable heated and airconditioned homes you might shudder. You have let yourself become blind for the magic of this Near Death Experience . It is the holding by the shamans of this ritual that makes all the difference. We shamans know the body and mind are desperately screaming. It's not that we don't care, buit we know something bigger is also happening. We know how to walk that edge in safety. We trust. We know to work that magic.  This is our art, our mastery.

I feel our time really needs more of these rituals. I offer them on a yearly basis, in the form of a Vision Quest. This is 4 days and nights alone in nature, without food, shelter or human company. Every time I see the women coming back, I realize they are indeed near Death. Just now I also offered one to Marianne Williamson, who is so bravely stepping up to create politics anew. She will surely need something to stay rooted and not go crazy with the world around her! In these held Near death experiences are to be found the keys to renewal, to adaptation to changing circumstances, to love and wisdom. Tha anchor to stay rooted in your own and nature's wisdom in a world gone nuts.

I like to embed these rituals in a longer program- for many of us are so far removed from this way of being with life and death. To get out of the ritual what someone in a shamanic culture would, we need first to let go of a lot of ego. We need a different paradigm. I have been doing this work now for over 15 years. I find every year my holding grows stronger, the experiences of the participants grow deeper, and the effect it has on their life rockets.

Karin, one participant, says it thus: 'this work has given me myself'. Krista said: 'The Initiation has given me the blueprint to free myself to live my purpose'.

Marion Woodman so pertinently says Life and Death are not two. They are one. Bette Midler was singing it to us:

It's the one afraid of dying that never learns to live

It is this paradoxical wisdom that we tap into during these Initiation Rituals.

I have a dream that in this time when our race, so many animal and plant races, and possibly the earth are near death, that more and more people will do Vision Quests, Sun Dances, or other Near Death Rituals. Everyone is called for. And especially the ones who feel not at  home in this culture, their social network, their bodies. You may see yourself as less. I see you as a fallen tree that has managed to live on. You are likely to have some more of the qualities that are needed in this Time Near Death.

I have a dream that all our political leaders will Quest for Vision before they take up their responsible job. May it be so.

 

Blessed Be, 

Klara