Being Born

I’m looking forward to being with you tonight. We will bring our attention to Chapter 1 of “King, Magician, Warrior, Lover,” The Crisis of Masculine Ritual Process (not to the whole of Part 1).

It was my birthday yesterday. It has been an eventful year. I facilitated my last “in person” retreat last February in a remote corner of the Colombian Pacific Coast, a Solidarity Laboratory for AfroColombians. It was epic.

I make a living from bringing people together. The pandemic struck at the heart of my business model. It has been a year of adaptation.

My last time on an airplane was about a year ago this week, when we went to Puerto Rico to say our last goodbyes to my adored Abuelo. 

My separation from my son’s mother entered it’s most difficult stage as we opened into last summer. Things are better now. But it has been quite a heart wrenching break.

I share all of this to make the point that it has been quite a year, for me, as for most of humanity. It has been challenging, but I have also been held by love. I am growing as a man. And I have been able to shift a lot of my work.

On Saturday night I sat in ceremony and it was perhaps the most potent experience I have yet had working with this ancient medicine way. Talk about the power of ritual. My consciousness was taken over by a force, a supremely benevolent force much greater than myself. I was owned, dominated, schooled, handled, gifted, loved, shown, in ways that become impossible to speak of. I felt like I was being grown. 

The miracle exceeded my understanding, and the divine intelligence told me, over and over again, that it isn’t about understanding. That I don’t have to understand. I just have to trust. “What do I do with this?” I kept asking. And I was told again and again that there is nothing to do but trust. “How do I trust? How do I let go?” It happens  by itself I was told.

What do I “do” with something that seems to be beyond my will?

I write to you at the early stage of integration. I share my heart and realization from a place of awe and wonder. I offer a tiny glimpse of what I have tasted that I know is not just mine, it’s ours. 

I look forward to being with you tonight.

Abrazos,

Gibrán