Shamans of San Damiano

By J. Lamah Walker

A Truly All-American
Renaissance Prophet
Even without any actual historical references, Lamah contends that the contents of this narrative is a true story in reality. And after all, what is reality?
This poignant book is, in essence, a story that is all about the power and significance of love. It begins at the closing years of the 18th century and has its final installment of inspirational spiritual muse manifested during the early to mid-19th Century. The source of this loving tale is an earthbound disembodied soul of unprecedented spiritual substance, who remained in spirit close to the geographic origins of this prophetic story until the end of the 20th Century. It was then that several conspiring, sometimes tragic circumstances brought together two initiate, spiritually gifted Medicine Men whose lives in this Garden of Eden were necessarily separated by the passage of more than a hundred years. They would dedicate their modest lives to the healing of others spirits through that immutable power of love, a love that was and should always remain necessarily unconditional, and always boundless.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Trafford Publishing
• Release date: Oct 30, 2010
• ISBN: 9781426941344

J. Lamah Walker

J. Lamah Walker was ordained at nineteen and later received four college degrees in Religion, Psychology, Sociology, History of Mankind’s Education (PhD) and Counseling (M.Ed.). It was his life’s experiences and his unique possession of a powerful command of his own genetic memory that all combined with his extensive education that from which he wrote about his groundbreaking concept of the Age of Reality. Lamah had seriously researched the history of mankind’s religions and their various effects on man’s spiritual maturity, but only AFTER initially writing about this Age of Reality. All that he has written was guided by a youth thought enbeded in one of his poems, “I’m not here to read what others write, nor to see with a guilding light. For that youthful thought alone signafies the reality that J. Lamah’s writings are entirely of his own unique personage.

Book preview

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SHAMANS

of

SAN DAMIANO

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J. Lamah Walker

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© Copyright 2010 J. Lamah Walker.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the written prior permission of the author.

The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

A Truly All-American Renaissance Prophet

Printed in the United States of America.

ISBN: 978-1-4269-4132-0 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4269-4133-7 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4269-4134-4 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2010912797

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Trafford rev. 10/18/2010

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To:

The ailing

and the lonely

who are too often in

a hopeless search

for healing

and love

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J. LAMAH WALKER,

a graduate of the University of Miami (B.A. in Psychology & Religion) and Georgia State University (B.A. in Sociology/Criminology), received his M.Ed. from West Texas State in Com-munity Counseling and his Ph.D. from the University of Oklahoma in the Administration of Higher Education. While at the University of Oklahoma, he was the recipient of The Robert E. Ohm Dissertation Assistance Memorial Award for outstanding scholarship as an advanced graduate student in the field of higher education and general administration. He last served as a clinical psychotherapist at the Student Health Center at the University of New Mexico. Outside those protective confines of that academic ivory tower, Lamah has been a general contractor and real estate broker in New Mexico for some thirty years and was ordained as a minister of the Gospel at the age of nineteen in his parent’s interdenominational Christian church, New Age Church of Truth. This dynamic and resourceful Renaissance man more than anything else dramatically represents the old Stoic aphorism that: Life makes philosophers of us all. Besides all the other accomplishments of this unusual man, he is also a storyteller with this one very inspiring tale to share that is only enhanced by his having been duly initiated as a Medicine Man under the spiritual and loving direction of a Native American who was a humble member of the Bear Clan.

CONTENTS

Preface

Prologue

San Damiano Cross

01 Awakening…

02 The Groundwork…

03 Enter The Bear

04 Dream Worlds

05 Shamans Of Old

06 The Apprentice

07 Discoveries…

08 The Arrival Of Spring

09 Šipa•Puli•Ma Found

10 Sacred Offerings

11 The Messenger

12 Zuni Bound

13 Commemorations

14 Encounters

15 The Pilgrimage

16 Powerful Medicine

17 After The Fact

18 Synopsis Of The Age Of Reality

19 Feast Of Agapé: An Alternative

Shaman’s Genealogy

Dancing With Sunsets

Thanks to…

John for his enduring love

Barbara for always being my sister

Lynn Andrews for a wonderful future

Lawrence W. Lee for fine artistry

Dennis for his friendship

Loving, Caring Friends

Nona, Don, Jan,

Rita

PREFACE

We all struggle just to subsist in this often crazy world of ours that is all too recklessly full of innumerable illusions that we have simply come to accept and too easily believe that they are all actually established, believable and well-founded realities. This present bit of rather intriguing and inspiring oral history has been in the most thoughtful and critical formulation for some sixteen years before it was ever and finally committed to the written page. This otherwise quite extended and previously unexplained passage of time was due in large part to the indispensable manifestation of many of the story’s more current revelations, discoveries and events that serendipitously needed to have ultimately and inevitably manifested themselves as well as the perceived self-imposed necessity for the author to have conclusively resolved his own ethical/moral struggle dealing with the possible appearance of serious incongruence between that of relating a story with such authoritative certainty on the one hand and at the same instance my having no real sources of information that may have in any manner actually substantiated or authenticated the historical elements or characters of this intriguing tale. One might easily suspect that there has been entirely too much literary license employed in certain affected portions of this story; I can only assure you that those particular incidences that are often related so dramatically and may even appear to have no true life historical basis, may in fact, be far more compelling in their essence than many of those more convincing but often totally unsubstantiated illusions that all of us are repeatedly subjected to on such a commanding and relentlessly consistent basis. After all, what is reality? And, aren’t we all too often guilty of simply choosing that path of least resistance just so that we won’t remotely appear to be rocking the boat or possibly disappoint some loved one by choosing a road less traveled?

This rather poignant tale is in essence a story that is all about the power and significance of love that may have well had portions of its earliest development deceptively cloaked in what our Western culture might refer to as some form of carnal lust and passion. It all begins in the very closing years of the Eighteenth Century and had its final and most poignant installment of inspirational and spiritual muse dramatically manifested during the mid-Nineteenth century. The source and inspiration for this most loving tale is, for the lack of any other rational explanation, this earthbound disembodied soul of unprecedented spiritual substance. This loving soul remained in spirit close to the geographic origins of this prophetic story until the very end of the Twentieth Century, where several conspiring and sometimes even tragic circumstances brought together two initiated and spiritually gifted Medicine Men whose actual lives in this living Garden of Eden were necessarily separated by the passage of more than a hundred or so years. Only that most poignant expression of love has that immutable power of transcending any and all obstacles of life if aptly yielded to in that true character of giving and charity. Its rightful consignment in each of our individual lives has perhaps too often and so sadly been covertly subjugated to those conspired and grand illusions that have otherwise been deviously created only to enslave our free-born spirits and that naturally imbued appetite for the lust of a bountiful life that should be so naturally full of personal contentment. These gifted Medicine Men of San Damiano dedicated most of their modest lives to the healing of others’ spirits through that immutable power of love, a love that was and should always remain necessarily unconditional and always boundless.

PROLOGUE

This beautiful and intriguing Land of Enchantment has for many many years drawn to its intuitively perceived mystical province, peoples in search of a unique and often unconventional spiritual milieu. It is a most distinctive land that is so naturally diverse in both its indigenous and immigrant human inhabitants, as well as possessing every ecological biome level with the singular exception of arctic tundra; what a naturally wonderful and miraculous diversity! The spiritual fabric of this compelling story is equally diverse and most dramatically illustrates that at the very core of every human being is a common quintessence that recognizes nothing of the multiplicity of labeled-differences that are too persistently and often unjustly imposed upon every human, whether they be in regards to one’s race, color, ethnicity, national origin, religion, personal appearance, gender, sexual orientation, disability or age in their naturally diverse origins.

The varied social, political, cultural, spiritual and most certainly the personal elements of this compelling story could have only been appropriately narrated by one whose own life experiences so closely paralleled these too often contrasting constituents of human circumstance. There is no substitute for fully understanding our neighbor’s uniquely exceptional condition except our actually standing in their sandals; for many of us, that’s simply a virtual impossibility. One of Buddha’s reflective instructions to the judge was most simply and yet profoundly stated as, do not pass judgment until you have stood in the defendant’s sandals. Is this not of the very same essential quintessence contained in one of Jesus’ more divine pronouncements on the Mount that one should not judge others less they should run the awful risk of being so judged themselves? JUDGE NOT, that ye be not judged. For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged; and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again. We will and should all ultimately reap what we so willingly sow in this often meager and struggling life of ours, and the only assurance of any real joy comes solely from our exerted ability to knowingly cast aside our learned and often unjustified prejudices, and in their place, establish an attitude towards others that is based solely on love.

If I were to have fully accepted some of the moral condemnations of my own culture’s basic Judeo-Christian religious despots, I would have already condemned myself to the same hellish conclusion that is so tragically attended by one-third of all teenage suicides in America; homosexuality. Many of these same tyrannical authoritarians also deny the equality of women and relegate their gender to some lesser station that is necessarily below that of a man; where would the human race be without this gentle member? There are certain portions of this story that manifested themselves in such a dramatic fashion that I was initially hesitant in relating them, most simply because they might unnecessarily offend the very reader that may actually benefit the most from contemplating the ultimate message of this tale. In that light and to those who are too easily offended by those sometimes perceived misgivings of their own neighbors, may I suggest that you reserve any final judgment of this bit of intentionally spiritual literature until you have completely read the entire story to its most inspirational conclusion.

Come walk with me in my own sandals, visualizing and experiencing this southwest Land of Enchantment through my eyes, and even more importantly, walk with me in the buckskin moccasins of these initiated Shamans as they innocently and sometimes tragically discover the spiritual mysteries of the human spirit. This story could have only taken place in this marvelous land of human and spiritual enchantment and in that unusual period of Southwestern history where two totally diverse cultures collided head-on and still miraculously managed to ultimately converge through the shared experiences of two Nineteenth Century Shamans and an exceptionally loving Jesuit priest for the singular and compassionate purpose of uncovering and preserving the Truth; the only ultimate and legitimate source for our spiritual and personal salvation. Those boisterous and often righteous claims of religious salvation that are even partially devoid of any demonstration of unconditional love are simply the harsh evidence of a creed that is totally unworthy of any human and/or serious consideration.

The better part of this story takes place at a time in the history of this southwest territory when English just wasn’t the prevailing language. In fact, most of the story is centered on that specific period of history that is referred to as the Mexican Period following Mexico’s independence from Spain and just when that infamous Santa Fe Trail was first established as a trade route for the purpose of commerce with a foreign country, Mexico. Were I to have written this story in the Zuni language, not that these noble people ever had a written form, and the European Spanish of that period, none of us would aptly understand the essence of what was taking place at any given point. Please bear with me in that I have of necessity imposed my own vocabulary and sometimes that of my computer’s thesaurus to best relate the intimate feelings and the essence of what these unusually passionate and intelligent characters so freely shared with one another.

And lastly, is this a true story? You bet your life it is!

SAN DAMIANO CROSS

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With the initial reading of this book, you will discover the source of my own discovery of this very special symbol in the form of an artistic depiction of the crucifixion. The artist is unknown. The actual cross survived and remained in the nave of the ruined church known as San Damiano (Saint Damien) that Francesco, who later became known as Saint Francis, restored at the beginning of his ministry; the original cross was thought to have been painted in the 12th century, measures almost 75 ins. high, 47 ins. wide, and is almost 5 ins. thick. It is now housed in the Basilica of Saint Clare of Assisi.

AWAKENING…

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I was sound asleep in my own bed at San Damiano when I was so abruptly awakened on July 17, 2001 at just about five minutes till nine (I had begrudgingly glanced at my digital clock in the headboard just before picking up the phone) by the most unexpected, unwanted, and certainly annoying ringing of the telephone. Being the consummate night owl that I had become at that time in my life, I generally slept rather late, and any calls before 10:00 AM seemed to always effectively disengage me in a most untimely fashion from any of those sometimes intriguing dreams that may have been so totally absorbing to the point of realism. Such an abrupt interruption also seems to wipe the conscious memory essentially clean of any reasonable recollection of those dream’s contents, even with the greatest of effort. What a bummer it was! I picked up the receiver in a slightly befuddled and somewhat agitated state of mind and immediately recognized a familiar voice: that of Ellen Raimer. Ellen was phoning just to inform me that she would be momentarily departing Albuquerque for her parents’ residence in Wisconsin, in order to help them move from their long-time homestead into some retirement quarters, and therefore wouldn’t be able to attend my birthday party that John Howell, my more than faithful housemate of some 12 years, had planned for 1:00 PM that Saturday. Ellen sort of hesitantly inquired, Why this year? postulating as to just why I was celebrating that particular birthday since, according to her own good recollection, it wasn’t yet time for my sixtieth. You see, I hadn’t had any birthday parties for as long as I could remember, and this was a rather unexpected event to be taking place at San Damiano; I have never really wanted to celebrate any of my birthdays except maybe as a very young child. Ellen was correct of course; I explained to her that it was my own sixth-sense contention that John had probably planned this particular gala event so that he could have an appropriately orchestrated stage on which to present me with the very special gift that he had apparently purchased some six months prior. This mystery gift had been staring me in the face every time I entered my walk-in closet, with specific instructions from John that I was to disregard its presence until my birthday. I had also shared with Ellen that my sister, Barbara, who was visiting Albuquerque from Ft. Lauderdale, had made the suggestion that I should simply tell everyone that might bother to inquire that this was going to simply be the last birthday that I ever intended to celebrate since it was the very last one of my fifties: fifty-nine. After all, who wants to celebrate their sixtieth and beyond? Just to be alive is often a celebration in and of itself by then.

Except that Ellen Raimer was a most significant part of this entire story from its earliest inception, there was no other prior cognitive reason for this particular awakening incident to have unexpectedly sparked in me the sudden urgency to finally begin writing this tale that had been in various stages of formation for well over 15 years—perhaps for my entire life considering the very nature of the story at hand?

I have always been one of those caring individuals who wants to make things just right for another person, whether it was their personal well being or the manner in which they related to their surroundings; specifically an individual’s right to live his or her life in any manner they personally saw fit. My obsession with trying to make things OK for everyone else, and not always personally experiencing the same success, had as expected left me rather depressed at times and with those most desperate feelings of utter hopelessness. I suspect that my more recent bouts with nagging ideations of suicide, my dreaded birthday celebration that was so out of sync with the usual, and the mildly redundant conviction that I had accepted an obligation of eventually telling this strange story that was not yet fully materialized, that all combined to prompt my yearning to finally initiate the writing of this book, which I did almost immediately. I had imagined, after all, that if I were to get the book written, I could probably depart this miserable planet with no unfinished business and therefore a clear conscience. This was never an undertaking that was exactly of my own voluntary creation, nor did I even have any of those feelings of being completely comfortable with relating certain portions of this story that had such questionable facts and often seemed rather implausible to my own limited and so often conservative understanding of the real world. On the other hand, the very spiritual and personal nature of much of this tale is so very basic to the highest potential of mankind that it seemed only right to have finally started the process. I have consistently lived, or at least attempted to live, a rather involved and sometimes overly-complicated life based almost entirely on the principle that while life always reveals the often painful and sometimes unbelievable truth, it happens with the dissemination of unconditional love. I am often in the role of attempting to practice what I preach.

For the most part I have never been much for telling the intimate details my own story, being essentially modest and a bit shy except where it may be absolutely necessary for the perceived benefit of others; in my professional field of psychopathology we call this modeling. I usually maintain a healthy self-image that I would rather relate to others by way of my actions rather than in any number of words; Your actions speak so loudly that I cannot hear your words.

As I am writing this narrative, I am about to finish another grueling literary project, if I can ever bring myself to complete it: the third book of an epic trilogy tragically but all too appropriately entitled, The Orchid Hell Chronicles. That entire heart-wrenching saga is all about my overly poignant trials and harsh tribulations with the malicious prejudice and bigotry unexpectedly encountered within the American Orchid Society, and I am most certainly the tragic central character, dealing with falsification, caricature, deceit, betrayal and the resultant entangled legal quagmire of a Federal lawsuit and other fowl odors of our American legal system. This hellish tale sucked me into its rather frightening and consuming clutches ever so covertly and unexpectedly as it rapidly developed, commencing some ten years prior to the writing of this present tale of Shamans; little did I know at the time just how many other individuals had been so negatively and affectively involved before that terrible experience had finally reached its immoral, illogical, and all too devastating conclusion. What was even more amazing to me is that this other far more inspiring and certainly more positive tale of Shamans continued to reveal itself, and in some strange fashion was able to maintain its own unique integrity, while I was so unfortunately enmeshed in this other terrible exigency, which was and still is essentially responsible for the above and often mentioned suicidal ideation and the accompanying chronic depression that persistently haunts my entire life on a daily basis. Perhaps the timely presence of this present narrative was some sort of a cosmic balance that presented itself just when I needed something far more affirmative in my life to ground me to this often-troubled earth. I have always felt that karma plays a significant part in all of our lives, and for all the hideous pain that I had then recently suffered at the hands of some of the most dastardly characters of the American Orchid Society, mostly for what I considered to be for the benefit of others, I certainly and even desperately needed to become involved in some other more life-giving endeavor. And it would be helpful if that new endeavor didn’t involve orchids. Thus, the recording of a far more inspiring story that offers a greater promise for the often sad state of mankind.

In any case, as a clinical psychotherapist my principle orientation was Gestalt, which essentially postulates that there should exist some sort of wholeness in each of our sometimes meager and often fragmented existences. In more common words, all the various aspects of our lives are connected to one another in some deliberate and purposeful manner, and the totality of these sometimes unknown points of connection becomes the magnificent wholeness of who we are at any given point in our lives. All too often , and at any given point in our lives, too few of us are ever aware of just how our experiences connect with the rest of our lives. That is why the idea of hindsight is so much more comforting than our anxieties about the future. In that sense, I feel that it would best serve the reader to have some basic knowledge of the early biographical background of this contemporary writer that was most serendipitously the genesis and foundation that eventually lead to the initiation of the first and perhaps only Shaman (Medicine Man) of San Damiano in the 20th Century, the full historical story of which will be disclosed later in this book. With the revealing of some of this earlier biographical information, it should become quite evident that my personal roots and earliest experiences may have brought me to this very point in my life and aptly served as the impregnated seeds that eventually accounted for a goodly portion of what I have become.

It was my rather righteous maternal grandfather who was most probably the actual beginning of my own spiritual fate, even though he died before I was a teenager. And when I use the word righteous to describe this man, I mean that in the most positive manner. He had been seriously disabled with a number of severe strokes when I was about four or five years old, and I have always regretted that I wasn’t able to sit at his feet and benefit directly from the vast wisdom he had gained through being an intelligent, intuitive, and self-instructed Christian theologian. He was an independent thinker of the highest rank, much in the same intellectual manner as Martin Luther. And as Martin Luther had aptly obtained his own profound insights and understanding of the flaws that were so dastardly perpetuated by the Catholic Church by simply and intensely studying the Latin gospels of that time, and most certainly apart from and without authoritative church interpretation, my grandfather did much the same with the King James version of the Bible. But most importantly, he lived his entire life according to the truth that he had uncovered for himself, and I feel that, of all of his children, my mother experienced the greatest benefit of his insightful spiritual wisdom because of her own instinctual intellect and unique perception of the world.

As a child, it was never my position to question the fact that my mother taught Baptist Sunday school while I was attending the First Methodist Church in Pompano Beach, Florida. This unquestioned conflict of religious loyalties all became evident to me when, at the age of 12, my mother informed me that she had never had me baptized in any particular church because, I want YOU to choose your own religion. What a profoundly liberal position for an otherwise Christian fundamentalist and Baptist Sunday school teacher! I’m quite sure that I didn’t possess a full appreciation or gratitude of just what an empowerment that unusual pronouncement had meant to me at that early time in my life. Since then I have gained the greatest respect for my mother’s cognitively motivated actions, now that I more fully understand the debilitating effects of imposing falsely based and narrowly-minded beliefs and mythologies on naturally innocent and impressionable children. Except that ye become as little children, I for one, strongly contend that the most cardinal of all parental sins is the impressing on a child, so mistakenly, that they were somehow born with that burdensome curse of original sin—unworthy of Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness, unless of course, they blindly and freely give their innocent souls to the church and submit themselves to the moral authority of its more often than not so ignorant and materially greedy leadership. My mother saved me from this immoral and unjustified enslavement and honored me with the divine, valuable, and indispensable knowledge that I was somehow sufficient unto myself to choose the direction that I was to take in my life. In my late teens, I wrote a poem that precisely expressed this spiritual emancipation, even though I am certain that I had little or no actual or deeper understanding of its full implication at the time, or even more importantly just how this loving gift of spiritual freedom and emancipation would eventually affect the entirety of my life as well as those around me:

Myself

The times have been when needs were great,

But now there’s been a change of late.

Before and now my God’s been first,

But now I haven’t that saintly curse.

My life so far has sought ideal,

But now I’ve found a fertile field;

Myself

Sounds prey egotistical, doesn’t it! It is nothing other than a self-proclaimed feeling of personal freedom that I wish everyone could experience to the same degree that I have. It was during my last year of high school that my own spiritual emancipation was beginning to manifest itself, not only in the feelings that I had aptly expressed in several poems including the one above, but most dramatically in a literary project that was required of each senior in order to graduate from Miami Senior High. Impartial English teachers were assigned to grade these papers, and the particular teacher that graded mine insisted that I meet with her so that she could explain to me just why she had given me the very lowest passing grade of C-minus. She apologetically yet very authoritatively insisted that I must have plagiarized the various arguments of my senior paper, since no high school student in her obviously biased opinion could have possibly written the contents of such a profound thesis. She confessed that since she could not actually prove her most wrongly conceived assertion of plagiarism, she wasn’t going to give me a failing grade, but that she would instead assign the paper the lowest passing grade. My paper, titled, The Reformation As Viewed from Both the Protestant and Catholic Points of View, was probably as far above her limited and narrow-minded ability to comprehend as it was over my own profound understanding of the negative ramifications of blindly accepting a religion as the basis of all reality, and most sadly of all, the absolute basis of all moral issues and morality.

The other significant part of my childhood was my early fascination and involvement with orchids. Mrs. Cusec, my fourth-grade teacher, loved field trips, and one of those fortuitous outings was to a local orchid grower and popular Florida tourist attraction, Fennell’s—The Orchid Jungle. I was fascinated with the whole adventure, and most particularly intrigued with a laboratory at this facility. Fennell’s was apparently amongst the first orchid hybridizers to become actively engaged in the cloning of orchids. For those earlier times, this cloning process was something right out of a science fiction book, and from that point forward, I was mysteriously and firmly hooked on orchids and their rather unique and scientific cultivation. Adding to the overall drama of this adventure was a particular classmate, Malcolm Wisehart. His father was a rather prominent judge in Miami, and the man grew orchids just as a hobby. It was interesting that this man, in a most fatherly manner, told me to enjoy these wonderful orchids, but never permit yourself to become involved with the American Orchid Society! I had the best of intentions of following this fatherly advice, having somehow arrived at the intuitive belief that this sacred-cow organization must have been some kind of exclusive, snobby group that was totally and inherently unsuitable for the more common folk like me.

I really got into the spirit of these mysterious and fascinating orchids; I built my own slat house at the age of twelve, scavenged the garbage cans of local orchid growers for throw-a-ways, and setup my own little make-shift laboratory for sowing the microscopic single-cell seeds of orchids in my family’s small kitchen. The eighth grade found me entering the science fair with an elaborate, self-constructed display depicting the Life Cycle of the Orchid, and