Sweat Lodges and intuition

I want to start off saying that I am in no way making claims in this post about being a great healer or that the type of ceremony that this describes is the sure way to get healed from anything, especially a very serious, life threatening disease.   This post is an account of a Sweat Lodge I did that spawned rumors that were grander than what actually happened. It’s also an account of an event that leads people to believe that a Sweat Lodge is the miracle place where all is made good and whoever runs a Lodge has some divine connection to super powers. That’s just not true. 

   What is true is that a Sweat Lodge is a complex site (as I described in another post) and that some amazing things can happen in a good way. The important thing to keep in mind is that nothing works alone. There are always circumstances and influences mingling in and out of whatever you do. 

   Back in 1998 I was running a metaphysical center in Davie Florida. It was a big house on 4.5 acres and we had enough room for organic gardens, healing circles and three Sweat Lodges. (I’ll get into why we had three on another posts.) My position was to screen people who wanted to use the property for classes, workshops and ceremonies and do whatever was needed to help things run smoothly.  

   One day a woman came to me who wanted to know if a Sweat Lodge would heal her. The first thing I told her that I did not look at myself as a healer nor should anyone see me that way. I have been involved in healings but I wouldn’t make the claim it was my doing.

   I asked her what the problem was and she told me she had AIDS. Not HIV but full on AIDS. I informed her that the inside of a Sweat Lodge was very hot and humid and can be hard on very fit people and that I didn’t think it was a good idea for her to be in one.

   She told me she had gone through all kinds of treatment and the bottom line was she was going to die and it might be soon. (I had to politely tell her I didn’t want it to happen here.) 

   I brought up the issue of liability and the responsibility I had to the owner of the property and the other people that benefited from our project. I confessed that I would have no idea what to do if it went wrong and if it did go wrong it wouldn’t be in a small way. Yeah, I was trying to back out of this one real quick. At the same time I was getting pictures in my mind of this happening and it all looked good. Ah, that old conflict of logic and intuition.

   I told her I wanted her to tell her doctor what she wanted to do tell me what he thinks and we’ll go from there. In the mean time I really need to think this through.

   There are those times in Shamanism when you wonder just what the hell are you getting into. 

   In Shamanism you agree to “do the pictures”. If you want to be in the flow and be guided to that right place at the right time you have to align yourself with energy of the mass conscience. This leads to the disclaimer we nervously joke about when your peers ask you if you are insane when they see you doing something. You simply reply, “Um, well, I’m, just doing the pictures.” So far I haven’t seen or heard anything bad happen from my peer group. 

   She came back and said her doctor didn’t think it was a good idea. Do tell. Then I surprised my self by asking her what she thought. What am I thinking?!!! She said she wanted to go through with it. I said ok. What did I just say? I told her I wanted to look at astrological aspects and I’ll set it up. What am I doing?!! Stop!!!

   She seemed happy and said she looked forward to my call.

   At the following house meeting I informed the group what I agreed to do and of course they just looked at me in disbelief. That look didn’t change when I mentioned the owner of the property said he trusted my judgment.   At that meeting were several Reiki Masters, a registered nurse who had reservations about this, my apprentice who was finisher up her eight year apprenticeship, a young witch who was thrown out of her coven and other assorted practitioners.   The nurse spoke up and said that even though she has reservations, she didn’t have any bad feeling about it. The others agreed that while the idea didn’t sound good, it didn’t feel bad. 

   The first plan was to have the Reiki people and the witch in the Lodge with me and the woman with AIDS for energetic support and one young woman who was a junior apprentice tending the fire while my senior apprentice with her. At the last minute my support group bailed out and said they did not want to go in the Lodge with us. They admitted it was out of fear. I couldn’t be upset about that. The one M.D. I asked opinion of said that he had no case studies to back him up but he thought it wouldn’t be much different that if I just had unsafe sex with her.

   We would be just a couple feet from one another in a small space, very hot, sweating profusely, and breathing it all in. He sarcastically apologized for not bothering to ask his colleagues for their opinions. 

   Some of you might be thinking that I’m a total nut as you read this but stick with me it gets better. 

   My Lodge guest felt there was something different and I told her the others changed their mind about going inside. I told her we were still on and while we were at the fire I asked her to tell me more about her story.   She said her husband had gone to get a check up and discovered he had AIDS and blamed it on her because she had an affair. On his deathbed, moments before he died he confessed that he had a regular habit of picking up prostitutes off the street. Then he was gone.

   This explained the static energy I was getting from her. While she looked very peaceful she had the feeling of rage. Now I had a plan. Not to heal her condition but for closure. I figured this was the best I could hope for. 

   I walked over to my support group and told them that when they started to hear loud screaming and exclamation they were to come over and start pulling the blankets off the lodge, cut the string that tied the saplings together start breaking up those saplings and give them to the woman tending the fire. They said they felt good with that.   I had my senior apprentice sit on the roof of the stables with my daughters and watch the site area.

   I went back to my guest and told her were ready to begin. I instructed her to go in first and sit at the West side of the Lodge since that was the direction of death and release. I also said that once we started I wanted her to tell that story again but not to me, to the spirit of her husband and I wanted her to tell her husband, in no uncertain terms, just how she felt about the whole situation and do it as loud and emphatic as she could be. No matter what is happening around us or how you think it may look or sound to others, do not stop. She agreed. 

   I put one stone into the Lodge and she went in and sat in the West. I put seven more stones in the Lodge that were about the size of bowling balls and went in and sat at the door which was in the East, the direction of renewal. I closed the door and started the prayers of acknowledgement and thanks and put the first water on the stones.

   We sat for a few minutes before she started to tell her story as she saw it to her husband. At one point she said she was upset and I remarked that she didn’t sound like it to me and probably didn’t sound like to him either. Her voice was a little elevated when she said she was mad and her life was cheated from her. I said “whatever” and put more water on the stones. She told me a little louder that she was extremely pissed about what he did and how he made her feel so bad for those years. “Then tell him, not me” I said. She did and it started to quickly get louder and I would put more water on the stones as she was screaming and cussing him for the act, the disease, the lies and the guilt and how he was such a coward for waiting until death to tell her the truth. The louder she got, the more water I put on the stones.

   My people started to quickly pull off the blankets and violently tear apart the Lodge from around us and throw the pieces to the fire tender who dropped them into the fire.

   The Lodge was gone, the blankets were strewn around and my support group was standing around us. She looked at me through the steam that was still rising and said “thank you”. Then her eyes got wide and she pointed behind me. I looked at the fire pit and saw a pillar of flame thirty feet or more tall spinning counter clockwise and my redneck girl fire tender was dancing wildly around it in the same direction. I had never seen anything like it. I looked on the stable roof at my daughters and senior apprentice who were all staring at the whole scene.

   We packed up the site and threw out the blankets. We went into the house for fruit and juices which is an informal requirement of mine after Lodges. She told us how she felt before and after the ceremony. We exchanged hugs and she left. 

   I was working in the site area a few weeks later when a woman walked up to me and said hi. She asked me what I was doing and made small talk as people would often do before they told me why they dropped by. I finally asked if I could help her with anything. She looked bewildered then smiled and laughed. “You don’t remember me, do you? Do I look that different?” I admitted I didn’t and she laughed as she described the Lodge being destroyed around us.

   I was shocked. The woman who looked like she should be shopping for coffins was now the picture of health. She still had AIDS but her doctor said that her body had made some kind of peace or agreement with it. She said it looked like it was going away and that she’s heard that can happen. 

   My senior apprentice and daughters told me they saw a very dark energy coming from the West after we got in the Lodge. They said that it looked like a shadow within the night that was moving along the ground towards the Lodge and it made them very concerned about how things were going to turn out. (It was a cloudless night on a new moon.) It stopped moving towards the Lodge after she started screaming and then faded away.  

   I had never done a Lodge like that before. I certainly wasn’t trained to do it like that and doubt I’ll do it again. I’ve heard through the hebegebe grapevine that she is still doing well. Since then I’ve had numerous blood tests for jobs, insurance and medical certificates and I have no negative effects from that Lodge. 

      People have asked if I really cure AIDS and cancer in Sweat Lodges. Of course I say no but after having them tell me what they heard I understand how desperate people can become prey to a bad ceremony. They’re scared, hopeful and looking for anything that might give them that extra time. 

   I have a reputation for being very good at what I do and I’ve been doing it a long time. I could come up with all kinds of theories about what changed her and why the fire acted like that but I honestly don’t know.

   Maybe the previous treatments caught up and worked. Maybe it was the fact that a bunch of people got together one night and gave her a ceremony for free that changed her outlook. Maybe it was just time to get better. 

   I do know that there was this group of people who trusted themselves against all logic and did something completely unorthodox that ended well. The only thing they knew was they wanted to do something good for someone so they gave away their time and energy to a dying stranger.