BRANDED BY THE SPIRIT by El Collie ©2000 (El Collie spent many years working on her book Branded by the Spirit. She still had not finished it when she died in April of 2002. I am now adding chapters from the book to this web site, but will leave the original material up as well even though there is some duplication. I hope this addition will help people going thru Kundalini awakening, or those in contact with people in this transformative process. El's experience was unique to her, just as all spiritual awakenings are unique. Please respect the fact that this is El's writing. But please feel free to share it with any individual that may benefit from it.) Branded by the Spirit © El Collie 2000 Chapter 1 HERE THERE BE DRAGONS "The soul doesn't care at all what price we have to pay to follow our calls. Our happiness and security and status simply don't matter to it, although our courage, faith, and aliveness do." -- Gregg Levoy Kundalini is the mysterious bio-spiritual agent that awakens consciousness. In India, she is worshipped as a Goddess. I did not go in search of the Goddess; she came to me when I least expected it, pouring herself into me through megavolts of energy that turned my body into her electrified living temple. Throughout my life, I had caught glimpses of her in the shadows, not knowing what it was I sensed hovering there, as she patiently bided her time, whispering occasionally in a language I could not fully comprehend, "You belong to me." My path is uniquely my own, which is true of everyone. Yet there is a universality in what I have experienced and learned from Kundalini which will be apparent to anyone else who has been graced by her presence. The specifics of the particular tangent my life has taken will seem strange to many and familiar to some. I feel it's necessary to highlight this part of life insofar as it helps explain my arrival at this juncture of my spiritual journey. The rest of the book describes the workings of Kundalini in a more general manner. Behind the Scenes "Many non-traditional people of the West seem not only to appreciate the "road" of the shaman, but also appear to have an affinity for the 'Medicine Way.'" -- Joan Halifax I've come to realize I've been a shaman/priestess all along without knowing it. I spent decades grappling to identify my calling in a culture, which until very recently couldn't acknowledge or tolerate people like me. A unicorn in a herd of horses is apt to be regarded as a defective horse until the unicorn population explodes, which, thanks to Kundalini, is presently happening across the globe. But unless you have unicorn friends or happen to be a unicorn yourself, you may not have noticed. My life has been a series of unexpected Shamanic initiations. (Kundalini awakening falls roughly under this category, although there are people who experience Kundalini who are not shamans, and shamans who never encounter Kundalini.) Shamans function as conduits for the Spirit. They are messengers who mediate the Divine and facilitate spiritual growth for their fellow humans through healing, ritual, art, music, teaching, prophesy, and magic. Shamans act in accordance with Spirit guidance, and access multiple planes of existence. If that clears anything up, let me muddle it again. I'm not a shaman by prevailing definition. 1 That's been a problem all my life: I'm not exactly anything by prevailing definition. I've been writing reams since I was fifteen, but so paltry an amount of it has ever seen the light of publication that it's a stretch to call me a writer. I've had a flaming passion and prolific involvement with the arts even longer than that. While I quickly sold the only stuff I actually put up for sale (in a short-lived visual arts consignment shop in the early 80's), I probably fall more into the category of "arty" than artist. Then again, I hold myself to such towering standards than only a virtuoso could attain to them. I've spent thirty years studying and disseminating what I've gleaned of spirituality and metaphysics, though all of this was done informally, free of charge, and without emphasis on my teacher/counselor role. I read incessantly (and once tallied the number of books I'd consumed in my adult years to roughly 5,000). I've been a behind-the-scenes innovator in both the performing arts and spiritual communities, while remaining a minnow in the splashy public pond. I've lived on the fringes of the periphery, in the basement of the underground... and I've entered most every social edifice through the back door. Whatever it is that I am, it tends toward the self-made and homegrown. Even so, my journey has been an obstacle course cum pathway carved out for me by forces which have alternately frustrated me and buoyed me along what has seemed to be a destined route. I've been pushed, prodded, shoved, lured and lifted to places where I never would have arrived if I'd been left to my own devices. The way the Shamanic works in my case is that Power reveals itself to me, which sounds horribly grandiose, but I know of no better way to put it. Periodically, the Universe has grabbed me by the scruff of my neck and commanded: Here, know this Great Secret. Then it shows me something so far buried in the closet of the collective consciousness that I am left reeling. Power has revealed itself in many ways, many forms, many degrees throughout my life. This is not to say that I am a powerful woman in any normal sense of the word. To the contrary, to all outer appearances, I am eccentric at best. Shamanic power operates differently than mundane power. It is given as a tool for spiritual service and in my case has been delivered in such a way as to be unquantifiable by standard measure. In plain English, it's unrecognizable as power. Nonetheless, it has equipped me to reach and fortify people who would otherwise fall through the cracks of the cultural structure: fellow sensitizes, misunderstood mystics, frightened initiates, new shamans-in-the-making -- all lost in the metropolis of hard core materialism. Power has given me voice to call out their true names and destinies in a world which tells them they have no valid identity or vocation here. I am speaking poetically, of course. My experiential knowledge allows me to help others receive the gifts which come in the strangest wrappings. I am able to serve those who have been unexpectedly anointed by Spirit; those who have been torched by the soul's flames; those broken in body, heart and mind by Life; those left standing raw and vulnerable at the side of the road to God only knows where. I know how to reach out and help because Power has dropped me into the same situations and 2 taught me firsthand what it takes to survive, learn, and move on... That is the shaman's work: to climb one's way out of the abyss and thereafter be a living beacon of hope and guidance to others who have fallen and can't get up. Again, I realize this sounds inflated and histrionic, as if I'm depicting myself as some kind of supernatural super hero in spandex and cape, flying to the rescue of the wretched of the earth. It actually works in quiet, simple, often guileless ways. I share what I know, I extend my heart, I offer support and let the Spirit do the rest. As an eighth house Scorpio, I also have the unenviable task of retrieving everything sacred from the cultural garbage bin of the taboo: the perception of all things invisible, discourse with spirits, holy sexuality, all the Goddess sacraments, knowledge of animal and plant allies... In all of these, I'm aided by a growing cadre of emissaries devoted to restoring the lost wisdom of the divine feminine. The selective sociopolitical "war on drugs" has demonized the most powerful of sacred plants, including the compassionate narcotic species and the gateway psychedelics. Of all these, the potent sacred herb tobacco has most retaliated, casting a curse on a world which has used it irreverently. Because of this, it is the most currently despised of all taboos, and will probably remain on the forbidden list longer than any of the others. I've stopped experimenting with contraband drugs twenty years ago, but I still smoke tobacco. I'm not claiming that cigarettes are good for anyone's health, but the sacred is not about physical fitness. A great many seers, mystics and healers have been smokers, including Helen Shucman (who channeled the original Course in Miracles books), Elizabeth Kulber Ross, Stephen Levine, Jane Roberts, Edgar Casey, Peter Hurkos... New Age teachers standing on the shoulders of these luminaries often try to sanitize their memories. The visionary astrologer Caroline Casey was amused to find that the portrait, which hung in the foyer of the London Theosophical Society office of their founder, Madame Blavatsky, had been airbrushed to remove the perpetual cigarette from her hand. A relevant aside: Richard Moss, an MD turned spiritual teacher, suspects "that people who smoke are already fairly sensitive and employ the cigarettes to ground themselves..." This observation is in line with what I have noticed about myself and certain other smokers.