The waiting room is the Live Oak lodge’s porch.  I wait, slouched on a wooden chair, feet up on the railing, gaze North East and skyward.  To my left, UMa is dipping big time; straight ahead, the Cassiopeia is rising, Perseus follows her.  The Saturn has gone direct today, or so the shaman said.

A meteor shoots just over the horizon.  Soon there will be more of them.  Sunny walks out of the lodge.   “You are up,” she says.  Into the lodge, and up the stairs, to the loft, I go.

I bring with me a secret question, so secret, I don’t dare ask: “What is my dharma?”  I bring with me a secret hope that the shaman will find the knots and kinks in my body and heal them.  Or, perhaps he will see what holds me back from being loved and will make that go away.

The shaman sits on the corner of a bed in the makeshift sanctuary.  Blue eyes, big American smile, slender frame, just a kid from the Plains. “Hey,” I say.  “Hey,” he grins back, “So, what’s going on in your life?”

Where do I begin.  Life is good.  Body is well.  Crooked and asymmetric, but well overall.  The work is fine, the boss is not the best, but I feel what I do is my work.  Biggest problem, I have trouble relating.  I assume hostility and judgment, don’t feel safe.

We look at my charts and we talk about work, growing up, relationships, analytical mind, loving heart, strong spirit, being nurturing, not so much receptive.  And how now is the time to learn new skills, the time to build new structures.  (Considering the Saturn’s direction).

We talk about dad, about mom, about the karma of neglect, volatility, mockery, narcissism, abandonment and how everyone just did the best they could.  And how I have worked through some of that already (there is ease and grief, where there used to be resentment).

“It came to you through all the past lives, or, depending how you like to think about it, through generation and generations of the people doing their best, and not doing it well enough.  It’s yours now.  Your dharma is to swing the pendulum.  As you get on the table now, focus on trusting, on receiving, on being love.”

On the table, he offers for me to receive what is pleasant, and what is difficult, and what makes me feel vulnerable, and what makes think, “How did he know this about me?”  He points out the White Tara Mantra in the soundtrack.  He shows how I store what I carry in the left shoulder, and in the diaphragm, and in the jaw.  I let him go all the way through them, so I can see the full extent.  And so I can learn to trust a little bit, and to be accepted even when I am a sobbing mess, even if just for a few minutes.

Then he returns it all backs to me: my body, my soul, and all that needs to heal.  I had known most of it.  Sort of.  He put it in front of me and prays for me to find a way.  The healing is mine to do, not his.