Monking Around

By Howchi Kilburn

They are an unlikely pair: Wu, the wandering Taoist, and Daphne, young, blonde, energetic and devoted to the practice of martial arts, meditative states and other-worldly journeys. Their teacher is a medicine woman in a remote village in New Mexico devoted to the ancient traditions. Taoists, pagans and shamans engage in a sustainable way of livi

• Language: English
• Publisher: Atmosphere Press
• Release date: Jan 15, 2021
• ISBN: 9781636496016

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MONKING AROUND

HOWCHI KILBURN

atmosphere press

Copyright © 2021 Howchi Kilburn

Published by Atmosphere Press

Cover design by Josep Lledó

No part of this book may be reproduced

except in brief quotations and in reviews

without permission from the publisher.

Monking Around

2021, Howchi Kilburn

atmospherepress.com

For Jaichima

Table of Contents

1.  Monking Around                                    3

2.  Snake                                    19

3.  Journeys                              44

4.  Toloache                              67

5.  Ancient Ones                              77

6.  Dance of All Beings                        89

7.  A Time to Heal                              104

8.  To Every Season                        118

9.  Osmosis                              131

10.  Womb of the Earth                        144

11.  Angels: Riders on a Storm                  158

We have a prophecy in our territories that states: The tender time will come when our Indigenous women will take back their rightful leadership roles in our societies all across our nations. Until that time our Earth Mother and all beings upon her will be out of balance.

~Elder Mae Louise Campbell

Monking Around

Shapeshifting requires the ability to transcend your attachments, in particular your ego attachments to identity and who you are. If you can get over your attachment to labeling yourself and  your cherishing of your identity, you can be virtually anybody. You can slip in and out of different shells, even different  animal  forms or deity forms.

― Zeena

There is no difference, he said.

She looked at him intently and motioned with her hands as if to say, Get on with it.

Wu gave her his usual half-smile. She gazed at him with a warmth that melted even his dispassionate heart and stirred up a bit of turbulence. No one had ever really done that before.  Yet he was still a monk. They did not get naked together and caress each other’s bodies. Maybe we will some day. It was a simultaneous thought that was also a kind of telepathy where it wasn’t obvious who was the sender and who the receiver.

She loved him and felt safe with him. If she wanted to rub bodies, she preferred women anyway. He was amused that this much younger woman with blond ringlets had so captivated a part of his heart that had lain dormant throughout all his training and practice and wandering. From very early in his development he had the full presence of a true Taoist, the equanimity that resolved everything in the moment. His old body had not created any severe limitations yet. No guarantees, you do the practice and see what happens.

There is little or no difference between the ways of these Goddess women and the ways of the ancient Taoists, when women stood as equals of men, and men stood as equals of women. Both were strong and sensitive. They loved nature: plants, animals, birds, other peoples. We can have curiosity now, but the curiosity of the ancients was boundless. We all wore the same robes, which could be pulled down and tied around our waists when working on a hot summer day.

How do you know these things? she quizzed him.

Stories passed down from parent to child, from teacher to student. To remember and repeat the old stories is very important.

Sometimes I feel like you are Merlin, and I am Niniane.

Who is she?

Not much is known. She was Merlin’s apprentice, and later she succeeded Viviane as the priestess of Avalon or Lady of the Lake.

I wonder what kind of magic they were living back then.

Avalon could only be reached if you went with the boatman who knew the way. It was in another dimension, like our Goddess sanctuaries. Healing, scrying, herbs, ceremonies of communion where the Higher Beings came and sat and danced with them. I have some stories too, she commented.

We are all descended from the ancients.

Some of us have forgotten the stories.

Other stories have been promoted in modern times.

Do the Ancient Ones and Higher Beings still sit and dance and sing with us?

If not now, soon, again. They are returning.

***

Was it a time that encouraged everyone to be themselves?

Daphne took the question from one member of the group that had been drawn to them. Yes, it was so much that way that your question would not be understood. There was no separation. There was only the True Self and harmony with others.

It's hard to imagine, the questioner commented.

From the modern perspective it definitely is. We have all learned to adapt, to get along, to fit in, to avoid punishment. Daphne and Wu had travelled together for several years during which time Daphne had become more and more the voice for the two of them. Occasionally she would still look in his direction. He always bowed almost imperceptibly. Their minds had increasingly become the one mind of the Tao.

Another questioner asked, Was there negativity, and how was it dealt with?

There was weather. There were steep mountains. There were challenges. The ancients were so skilled at controlling their body temperatures that weather was not the kind of challenge it is today. There were wild animals. The ancients knew their languages and soothed their fear with love and peaceful-mindedness. There were predators, but they presented no danger to the yogis of Tao.

What happened?

There was a trauma that did not get healed. Some portion of the human population got separated and isolated. They began running on fear. There was a new perception, 'the Other'. Always before any shadowy feelings were owned and generalized. The dangerous Other was a part of me. If fears came up, they were talked through. Nothing remained unreconciled. We imagine that a group of children got isolated by some cataclysmic event and went down a path of conflict, threat and defensiveness before they could be reintegrated into the mainstream. It may have been prolonged drought or floods, but we suspect it was sudden and cataclysmic and caused a long period of separation, where children grew up without the wise guidance of parents. Perhaps they were raised by wolves. They learned to survive by being predators. Then they were the wolf clan or the lion clan or some other being that they took their cues from.

Are you sure about this?

No, we're not. We have clear images of a time of greater harmony and flow, and we have the conditions of modern times. We're not sure exactly how we got from one to the other. Western religion blames it on the devil. It's a dramatic story but no more provable than the one I just told you.

What about you and Wu? How do you live?

We wander. We teach when people want us to teach.

A different questioner requested, I still want to know more about how things were when it truly was the universal Tao without separation, without fragmentation.

The oneness of flow, the fluidity we associate with Tao, everything is forever becoming everything else. Nothing is fixed nor static. That includes the human sexes: male and female flowed into and out of each other. No one was permanently male or female, simply somewhere in the process of one becoming the other.

Are you saying everyone was bisexual or androgynous?

In a sense, yes. I don't think there's a better way of describing it. In the earliest times the oneness was more what we characterize as female. When the male evolved out of the female, he was still part of her. He temporarily separated and rejoined, always connected, never disconnected. In those times the idea of male dominance would have been considered patently absurd. It was understood that the male was totally dependent on the female for its existence.

Male dominance usually requires violence in some form.

Yes, it does. We see it played out in all the male manipulations of nature that are culminating in a destruction of nature's ability to support and nurture human life. The male 'engineering' improvements usually have a destructive backlash that more than outweighs any gains the technology brought about, gains in one place, larger losses elsewhere.

Another voice asked, What are you suggesting is the proper path for the times we're living in?

Lead a simple life. The traditional Hopi in Arizona are a good model. Without modern tools they have lived well for centuries, probably millennia. They grow their corn and other crops, build their adobe houses, and hold it all together with a round of ceremonies that draws in the necessary harmony and flow to keep it all happening to support their lives. They are only one example of many around the earth who are still living in the old ways, cultivating a loving relationship with Mother Earth and all the other beings we share the universe with.

I heard that there was no Sex Goddess until men had become so separate, so on their own power trip. Before that it was all about a mutually nurturing relationship with Mother Goddess.

It's more sustainable and overall feels better than sex anyway.

The mostly female audience laughed out loud on that last comment. They'd all had experiences of sex not being what they wanted it to be. Most of them had borne and nursed children, immersed in that wondrous maternal-infant bond and everything that stems from it.

Wu and Daphne had been wandering together for several years, ever since members of the Goddess Circle in Northern California had begun to move to the Goddess Sanctuaries and participate less in conventional society. They were quite a pair in their almost identical robes, neither rising much above five feet in height. Daphne's long golden ringlets dramatically drew a lot of attention. Wu's long, straight dark hair was streaked with silver and was typically wound in a traditional bun on top of his head, adding a few inches to his stature. They walked the backroads of the American West, often accepting rides to the next town, often being invited to speak to a hastily assembled roomful of curious and a few seriously interested souls. He was often asked, Are you a real Taoist? Such an oddity he was in areas near the end of the twentieth century that still looked like the old West.

The two of them together constituted something never seen before. The most common question to Daphne was something like, How did you get mixed up in all of this?

She took it as a serious question and answered, Growing up in Southern California, I met a man like Wu. He was the healthiest adult I ever met as a child. I asked him to teach me.

Many times, they were offered a place to sleep for the night. In the morning they would continue their rambling. Sometimes they had to find their own shelter. On those occasions they would sit in yab yum embrace during the hours of darkness, meditating their way through the night, switching positions every hour or so. At around a hundred pounds each, neither was a great burden to the other. Their robes and body heat kept them comfortable. Additionally, Wu knew the technique of psychic heat meditation and was teaching it to Daphne.

Sometimes they were invited to stay a day or two and present a workshop. Daphne took the lead and demonstrated chi gung that was easily learned and made part of people's lives. Wu loved walking meditation. People were amazed at how profound such a simple exercise could be.  They became particularly popular at retirement communities, where people had the time to greet them, and be more than a little interested in what they might offer in the way of healing.

Couples as young as high school were intrigued by this thing called tantra, which Wu and Daphne taught fully clothed, as they practiced it themselves. This idea of sitting together in close intimate contact without any overtly sexual behavior was somewhat acceptable to some parents. Of course, the younger the person the more likely there would be a level of sexual excitation. What made this different was the idea that intercourse and other direct sexual stimulation was the thing to be avoided rather than the goal. Learning to maintain a certain level of pleasure without concentrating it into a climax followed by enervation, especially in the male, was a goal that could draw interest away from the old approach that had been summed up as, Wham; bam; thank you, ma’am.

Sometimes the demographics of a particular area presented them with all-women groups in the middle of a school day. Wu and Daphne encouraged the women to sit yab yum with each other to the extent that they were comfortable. Most women were comfortable enough to at least try it, and in some cases, friendships were strengthened. Usually women were more okay with close physical contact with each other than men were.

Often the Taoist pair were invited to stick around for a while. They might stay for a day or two, especially if there was particularly inclement weather, but then they’d be off again. In that short time, they often left behind new friends with a semi-promise, Probably we’ll be back this way again someday. There were many offers for permanent residence.

Their curriculum changed according to their audience: liberal, conservative, religious. They often found themselves in the recreation hall of a church. The introduction went something like this: "Taoism is not a religion. It is a philosophy and a set of practices designed to promote optimal healthiness. One of those practices is to neither