November 27, 2011
Oh, man, I just had the most amazing experience. I am on the flight from Kansas City to Newark on my way to Geneva and decided to take a little break from my talk preparations and read some more of Eliade’s Shamanism. I was thinking about—exulting in the fact of—how I have experienced so many of the things he describes, much of it before I even read about it. I just finished Michael Harner’s The Way of the Shaman and had the same experience. This is all so confirming and gratifying because I have had these experiences myself before I even knew that others experience the same or similar things.
Anyway, I was reading pages 133-35 concerning initiation experiences when Eliade mentioned flight experiences. I thought, “Well, I’ve had the Underworld experiences up to a point, and I’ve had rocket-like explosion experiences where I am dispersed grandly and orgasmically throughout the atmosphere, but I haven’t actually felt as though my own body was flying like a dragon through the sky.” (I’m not sure if this is true, because now that I write these words it feels very familiar.)
Just then, I looked out at the clouds below me, brilliant in the sunlight, and I was suddenly hurled out of the plane into the sky, flying at great speed, with such unexpected grace and confidence, every muscle of my chest and wings taught and vibrant in the rush of the wind and the thrust of lift off and circling downward and upward spirals. It was so beautiful and so physically real. I was ecstatic in a way that I now (as I write) realize was the natural extension of this morning’s meditative ecstasy where I felt such overwhelming gratitude for the beauty of this world and its experiences.
I realized that my dragon wings were covered with brilliant, even radiant rainbow chakra colors, each feather changing colors in some iridescent expression of cosmic love and wonder and flight. My long serpentine dragon tail guided me through the heavens as I simply soared, so at home in the sky and in my dragon beauty. How glorious! I don’t think I’ve ever used the word “glorious” before, but it’s so perfect right now.
After what seemed like fifteen or twenty minutes (but was probably in “real time” about five minutes) of air exultation, I suddenly flew straight down towards the earth and was flying through the earth itself, through dark, warm labyrinthine tunnels just as easily and gracefully as through the open sky. The tunnels swirled downwards and upwards and all around and my inner guiding system knew exactly where to go and how to move at every split second. Then just as suddenly I surged towards the surface and flew straight back up into the heavens.
As I opened my eyes, felt myself once again regain my physical body (which is quite an experience, just as at the end of my serpent Shakti Underworld travel), I picked up Eliade’s book and read the words “Rainbow Serpent.” I had just become a rainbow serpent and now I was reading about it just seconds after the fact. My spirit voice told me to get out my laptop and immediately write it all down before I lost it. Wow.
