Shamanism

I found an old journal from 2003 recently, and I was more than a little surprised to see just how...eclipsed I have become of my revelations from that era of my life.

All-the-while, I was aware that a certain a degree of jadedness had set in on me, mostly due to failed expectations and the experience of "getting old". But none-the-less, I still felt myself to be in-touch with my own enlightenment.

However, a strange sickness hit me suddenly, on President's Day, the day after I met Boris and Natalia Zhitomirsky's daughter Nikka. Whereas normally, I feel I have "caught a cold" from somebody or some behavior, this time, I couldn't come up with anything.

I was deeply disturbed however, from an experience I had that day: Natalia has a friend from northwestern china (Urumqi) named Ranum, who has a 10 year old daughter Nigara. Both of them are beautiful ladies, but Nigara took quite a liking to me this time and basically showered me with attention, laughter, and love. It was a radio frequency to a part of my heart which I had buried away.

Now the fact that a 5th grader sparked this feeling in me definitely left me feeling very concerned at my psychological well-being. I spent that evening smoking pot and freaking myself out, thinking like why am such a freak??

I fell asleep on the couch and I woke up in the morning with a cough that left me tasting blood. My first thought was, "You are KIDDING yourself if you think you have your smoking habit 'managed'. You are killing yourself."

Ugh. My body ached, so I proceeded to sleep it off, but it kept getting worse. By that evening, I was too sick to stand.

I missed two days of work, but by the end of the second day, as my visit to the doctor had confirmed, I was on the mend with no infection. I wasn't quite tired, so I scoured my bookshelves for something to read. I noticed a book I bought back in 2004 and had never read. "Chose By The Spirits", a guide book on becoming a Shaman. I had maybe tried to read it once, but it had seemed too practical for my paranormal-hungry self of that time, as well as from the Siberian family of Shamanism, which again, at that time, seemed outside my area of interest.

But now I have several friends from Russia, and in fact had just been spending time with Ranum, who grew up in the same culture as the author. So I began reading the book.

That night I fell asleep and had one of the most powerful dreams of my life. The first thing unique about it was that it started with me waking up within the dream. I woke up in Vegas-style penthouse motel room, although the size and lavishness of the room would shift dramatically. It was almost as if when you turning your head, you can't tell if the room is moving or your head is moving, because in this case, I would go to look under the bedside table but come back up to see the room had changed.

Somehow I *knew* this was the room of Jenna Jameson, but I have no idea how or why I knew that. Someone was in the shower, so I felt an impending sort of pressure to "do something" before they were done, but I didn't know what it was. Besides, as I got up and tried to do anything, the room would shift when I wasn't looking, and I was slowly becoming disoriented.

Per norm in dreams, none of this really bothered me yet. I didn't have the sense that anything was wrong...just typically difficult. To illustrate, at one point, the entire half of the room closest to the windows became *filled* with childrens stuffed animals. I think they were tigers of all shapes and sizes. When I would focus on anything, details would fill that area making it exponentially difficult to remain focuses on what I wanted.

I had managed to get myself over to the desk when the person from the shower appeared from the bathroom, except apparently there were two people in the shower, a middle-aged balding-and-buzzed sallow-looking shapeless white guy and his female counterpart. They just stared at me like cows. I was sitting on the floor at the foot of the bed closest to the window, and when I turned to look at it, now laying there was Jenna Jameson herself.

She was looking directly at me, she was very mandala-esque, meaning all around here were intricate patterns of light/cloth/form...and as I was looking at her, literally, her costuming would shift.

Then she became naked and began acting the way she is famous for acting, and for a few minutes it seemed like it was going to become one of those dreams. But just as I began to get excited, she did one of those "I AM ZUEL!" type of tricks and like pulled her pussy over her head or something incomprehensible...and transformed into a black-and-white asian-looking version of herself, complete with a tophat, white makeup, black gloves, and perhaps a long cigarette filter.

I looked to my right, out the window and I notice the skyline of Vegas...and a WHITE CAT who also seems to be wearing a sort of costume. The problem with this cat is that its hair is all flat and hard-looking, and its eyes are black marbles - it doesn't appear alive, it looks dead and stuff, although it is moving on its own.

By now, all the weirdness of the dream had added up and I begin feeling like, waaaait a minnnnnuuute, what the...

Just then, I looked down to see the cat had taken my whole pointer finger in its mouth and was sucking on it --

THAT WAS IT, I WOKE MYSELF UP.

Ever since that dream, I've felt different and I don't know how or why. It's almost like I'd totally lost my sense of purpose, trying to answer things like "Where should I live? Should I marry? Should I want kids? Will I ever be a successful artist?" And despite the repeated daily proposals of those questions, finding absolutely no answers.

Since the dream and being reminded of a very real spiritual world, I'm feeling hopeful again, excited for a task that is undeniably important to me and humanity.

But of course, I don't know how to proceed. So today, Saturday, I'm largely in the throws of regret, thinking about how Liz and Rhonda made their way into my life and how I so pig-headedly refused them.

I went to the book store to buy up a couple books. Borders in Glendale is closing and everything was 20% off, and I found a huge picture book of Frank Llyod Wright's houses, which was a steal for $50.

Beyond that, I feel like I need to remove smoking from my life. I'm afraid it will be rather hard, especially marijuana...but I've just been stoned for so many years now, I really don't feel I'm getting much out of it anymore. It feels like to really go further, I need to clean up.