Don't Try This At Home
March 21, 2008
by Jeffrey Pierce

Twenty-one years ago today, I dedicated myself to my spiritual path. Eleven years ago today, the first article associated with Old Ways was sent out over the Internet.

My how the times have changed.

Let's put this in perspective. The first episode of "Buffy: The Vampire Slayer" (a favorite series of one of my good friends) aired eleven days before I published my first article. Nintendo released the Nintendo 64 about three weeks earlier. Bill Clinton was in his second term as President of the United States.

My path had begun on March 21, 1987, a decade earlier. I had turned seventeen the week before I made a pact with the divine, promising to go anywhere I was led and do whatever I was called to do, if I could only experience Spirit firsthand. What seems like it was yesterday to me was, strangely, a very long time ago. The previous year had seen the space shuttle Challenger explode on lift-off. The Simpsons wouldn't premier on The Tracy Ullman Show for almost another month. Humanity wouldn't reach the 5 billion person mark until July. August 16 would see the Harmonic Convergence celebrated around the world. The construction of the Channel Tunnel between the United Kingdom and France wouldn't be initiated until December.

I remember how deeply all of us were in the broom closet back when I began this path. There were no lessons available on the Internet in those days. Covens were nearly impossible to find, as were spiritual teachers. A movie about Catholic prep high school girls practicing witchcraft (The Craft) came out in 1996 opening the eyes of a new generation to paganism. Filled with more enthusiasm than knowledge the newbies were frowned upon as "Crafties," and misinformation began to flow, first as a trickle, and then as a flood, as unprepared and uninstructed newcomers began to set up Circles and Covens of their own.

We still used "craft names" back then. Mine was Graelan, but everyone knew me as Winter. I'd founded a small site around 1994 on a free hosting service called GeoCities (long before it was purchased by Yahoo!) called, "Winter's Circle" where I offered a free course in my personal brand of witchcraft. I kept a very low profile and writing the first article of Old Ways represented a huge leap of faith for me.

The thing is, I love to teach. I have no issues going in front of a group of people, regardless of the number in attendance, to speak and hopefully offer them something they can use that will benefit them. But the moment that the spotlight shines on me, as an individual, the second someone says, "Wow... Jeffrey's really cool and stands out from the crowd," I instantly become tremendously uncomfortable.

Part of that discomfort is because I have chosen to teach as a path of servitude. While I accept donations through the Old Ways site, I never solicit them or ask for anything in return.

Part of it is because of the darkness, abuse and betrayal of my own childhood. While I've completely healed from those experiences, they put some interesting energetic patterns in place.

And part of it is because of a calling that I've never been comfortable talking about, even with my closest friends.

It's these last two are the driving motivation behind the ritual I'll be doing tonight.

The ritual itself is one of those things that I typically wouldn't share - and revealing it here, before I engage in it, is as much a declaration of change as my first article was an act of faith. The rite is a one-shot sort of thing, not something I'll be repeating and something that I definitely do not want to encourage folks to do on their own.

Tonight, Briana and I will be travelling to an undisclosed wilderness location where I will ritually die. My witness stone, a glacier-carved river rock that I've carried with me since my very first rite will be released and given to the spirit world as a gift, symbolically carrying my life and my path with it. It's an act of surrender, of letting go. After a preparatory ritual where some words will be said, I'll be calling upon a couple of spirits that I work with, stripping down until I'm completely skyclad, and then entrusting my body to an extremely cold body of water. For at least portions of the rite, I am intending to be completely submerged beneath the frigid waves. After adjusting to the cold, I'll be doing some inner plane energetic work to prepare myself for the core of the rite - which will be performed skyclad, embraced by the cold waters.

As I drift toward hypothermia and my body begins to take the steps toward dying, I'll begin psychically cleaning house, releasing parts of my psyche to the spirit world and, if necessary, cutting others away. I have a very narrow and very precise window that I have to hit, where the shivering has subsided enough for me to enter a meditative state and shamanic journey but before my body begins shutting down and actually heading toward death. At that point, I'll be very strongly connected to the spirit world and two things will happen.

First, I'll be calling on and integrating my higher self into my conscious being. Once that has been accomplished, I'll pull myself from the water and return under my own power to the circle where Bri will be waiting for me with dry clothing and other supplies to help me regain my core body temperature and treat potential hypothermia. (She's also running a stop watch and will cut the ritual short if I'm not completely done by the ten minute mark.) At that point, Bri will open her energy to me and any space that is left will be filled with her love for me (soulmate-level love is a pretty good medium to use to fill intentionally created psychic voids.)

One of the neglected areas of instruction in shamanism is that in order to fully embrace their path, a shaman is called upon to do two things - release every shred of their ego and regularly cross the line between life and death. There are right ways and wrong ways to do this - and I can't tell you how many folks I've come across that have chosen the easy way and added a definite measure of darkness to their own path. I don't teach this aspect of the path for a couple of reasons, aside from potential liability issues. First of all, it's intensely personal. There is simply no way to write lessons that will address an individual's unique challenges and circumstances. Second, a shaman's path is intimately tied into their core persona. Being a Warrior (in spades, I might add), means that my path often requires feats of endurance or strength to reach the deeper levels of my spiritual work. You have to be true to who you are - and in shamanism, your core persona is often the key that will unlock certain doors for you.

For instance, where one shaman might use hallucinogenic herbs to achieve a certain state of consciousness, another shaman with an Artist archetype may create something with a canvas and paint, using the painting itself as a meditation and the symbolism found in the end product as the message they receive. Because I have the Warrior archetype, my shamanic practice requires me to push the boundaries of my physical body when doing deep work.

So I hit the gym at four this morning and lifted heavy weights for an hour before I had to get ready for work. Over the course of the last two months, I've eaten an extremely healthy diet and gotten in exceptional physical condition. My last meal was organic granola, sunflower seeds, raisins, and soy milk for breakfast this morning and I'll be fasting until after the rite is completed. My diet has been completely clear of processed sugar for weeks on end. By the time the ritual rolls around, fish will be the only meat that I've eaten in more than twenty four hours. As our diet and fitness level can affect our energy and vibration, it's important for me to hone mine as close to "clean and healthy" as possible for a rite of this nature.

To engage in this level of work also requires that your inner world is as healthy as possible. I've been doing massive amounts of shadow work to the point that I can't find anything left to address. I have an incredibly clear understanding of the vast majority of my inner landscape and I'm at peace with as much of it as is humanly possible. My dreams, both last night and the night before, were incredibly vivid. As rites of this nature are incredibly non-linear, some of the energy from the other side of the rite has already begun to trickle into my world.

So why undertake a rite of this severity? Meditative journeying? Giving away a cherished stone? Risking hypothermia?

My childhood was rough. While it inspired me to dig deep and pursue my spiritual path, it also taught me a series of lessons that were extremely difficult to unlearn. Even when those lessons were unlearned, they had left templates in place that needed to be completely discarded in order for something else to be put in its place. When we've done all the work there is to do, when we've delved as deep as we can, and when we find we've healed but it's left scar tissue in its place, sometimes we just need to let it all go. Part of the ritual will be focused on that - a process that should leave portions of my "energy signature" clean and very "empty."

With the obstructions released and those places cleared out, it's important that we put something in its place. I've chosen to consciously integrate my higher self and fill in the cracks with Bri's love for me. In all honesty, I can't think of a better combination.

While I have no idea what the end result will be (and I'm intentionally going into tonight free of expectations), I know that it's already changed me - for the better. There is still work be done, but I'm ready to step up to my calling. And yes, I'll soon share the stories behind that call - and I'm ready to be more open, to more fully engage in the work that I do. My close pagan friends are already commenting on the changes. It should be interesting to see what awaits on the other side of tonight's rite.

Originally published at www.oldways.com/articles/2008/080321.html