The stage is certainly set for the extraordinary and the new…all routines and patterns are clearly broken (along with my tailbone!) and our resistence to change is low.  We are strangers in a strange land. We have travelled as far from home as we can go without beginning to come back.  Each of us is excited and terrified at the potential for change.

The morning starts with “cha” or horse tea, served by the fire.  Given the chilly, rain-soaked nights, we actually look forward to this suspicious brew.  If any of us were served this in a cafe’  we would send it back; but for now, it tastes like warmth and safety.

I have asked each person on the trip to create an intention: a goal that they hope to achieve through this journey.  It can be as simple as creating more abundance in life, or as meaningful as moving past some personal history.

One by one, our travelers declare themselves.

“I want to be more present, more in the moment.”

“I need to release this toxic anger, it isn’t me.”

“I want to finally manifest the career that I’ve been trying to create.”

“I want to let go of this shame that I carry with me.”

We all identify with these goals.

“I need to forgive a friend’s betrayal.”

I step in here and there to clarify: “How long ago was this betrayal?”  “Seven years ago, almost to the month.”

“I want to find my passion again.”

“I need to really find detachment in my life.”

“I want to take my power back from everything I’ve given it away to.”

One by one we supplicants offer up our requests in hope that the gods are listening.  Perhaps if we word it just so, the mere request will bring its own miraculous response.  We are, after all, in Tibet, the mothership for spirituality.  My own request seems harmless to me on the surface: I want more patience.  Little do we realize that with each request we are stirring up the logos and demons that guard these desires.

“ the perpetrator”

RATTLING THE DEVIL’S CAGE:

When we are traumatized in life or simply choose not to deal with an issue, we make a deal with the devil, so to speak.  We relegate one part of the mind to manage that area in whatever way that it needs to, so that we can move on and function.  We station a monster at the gate, and nothing may go in and nothing can pass through this area without that demon’s permission.  A real bargain has been struck and a balance created.  There is an enforced peace, but an uneasy one.

Do you know what happens when you provoke a demon?  Here we sit around the campfire blithely breaking all the rules and corrupting the boundaries of every issue.  The sky darkens above us as secrets are revealed and pacts are broken.  In that rarefied air we release ourselves from all of the old agreements and unwittingly unleash the entities surrounding each of these issues.

In the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous there is a term called going “banky”.  It means that you have touched an issue that is wired into your core memory banks, and you begin to react wildly and unpredictably. Each of us on the trek has raised the stakes of our game and in so doing, has shifted the balance and  summoned our deepest reactions.

The physical challenges of the trip continue to make themselves manifest:  each of us has a touch of altitude sickness, and while it is not severe enough  to quit anything, it certainly is a distraction.  On a personal level, I am feeling the furniture moving around on a very deep level.  Troublesome.  I may get lucky; it may just be a touch of dysentery.  My suspicion is that its origins lay elsewhere .  The sensations do have that primal, sub-conscious quality that signifies deep turbulence and deeper change.  Some resonance has been set in motion and to the horror and satisfaction of the trekkers, we are in the thick of it.

As we continue to get rained on daily, smiles thin.  I find myself in  short supply of that abundance of patience that I’ve requested.  Traveling the narrowest edge of a horse-trail, through trees and brush, we hear screams and thumps.  Because the trail is so narrow none of us can turn and see who might have bought the farm.  Poor “B”, the sweetest of us and certainly the angriest, has taken a fall.  Tibetan horses are evil and indifferent to the white devil.  They try to “rub you off” on  every tree, and so it’s a constant battle.  ”B”s horse has succeeded.  We discover later that she is black and blue from the middle of her chest through to her back and hips.

We established our own campfire, away from the guides.  This would be our territory, our “clear zone”.   We had survived the physical challenges of the trip, the emotional burden of weaving through the quake zone and living on this meager diet, (What’s for breakfast? Same as lunch, same as dinner: rice and vegetables!).  We managed to adjust to the twelve hour time change where night literally changes to day, and our new daily habit of spending half of our day on a reluctant beast; now we need a “safe”space to show up in.

All of the incredible breakthroughs and heart-opening changes showed up in that space.  Sitting together, telling truth and fighting for clarity around the campfire was the opening for all of the transformation that we had requested.  Each of us, one by one, went through the fire and hell of our issues, and each of us came out stronger on the other side of those issues.   Each of us, one at a time met our demons.  These devils are unique enough to show up in all of us, but in dramatically different ways.  Some of us would be angry, some withdrawn.  Others would show up distracted or disinterested, or eager for a change, any change.  It was always the same primal devils, even if a different dance. In a way, we could have been anywhere, but we fought these battles on top of the world.