Wisdom Training?

While learning to put some of my photos into my new computer (now a Mac lover again!!), I came across a photo taken in the rainforest on the Big Island in Hawaii a handful of years ago. In the picture I am with a Hawaiian guide and a native Hawaiian Kahuna (native spiritual leader). We were on a four-hour hike in the rainforest, and I was supposedly on the easier of two planned hikes. That is, I was until the guide told a few of us about something not-to-be-missed way up off the trail. Several of us followed and discovered a magnificent native ceremonial site with amazing formations among the overgrowth in the forest. This photo was taken an hour or so later, back down on the trail, after...unknown to me then, I had just broken my leg!!! I can see the pain on my face in the photo!!! And I had broken my leg...though thought it was just a sprain...while climbing up onto a particular ceremonial platform.

I hiked two more hours out of the rainforest, went out for an all-day whale watching cruise (magical with what we experienced..a whale mother and her calf and male escort APPROACHING the boat and traveling all the way down from the bow to the stern in slow-motion...almost heart-stopping in the moment); went swimming with the dolphins, spent another day hiking to and around the volcano, and was there for a six-day conference!!

Actually, I then came home and worked for a week before my chiropractor (seen for a different reason) sent me to have my ankle X-rayed. The doctors, seeing a clear and complete break in one of my leg bones (fibula) almost two weeks after it happened (!), told me I could NOT have done all I did on that leg without moving the bone out of alignment and requiring surgery. They said and showed me that it was completely snapped across, one piece just resting on top of the other..."nothing holding it in place", they added!! However, I had done all that I had said, and there were about sixty witnesses to all of it! I must say that the energy on the Island and in the conference was very high!! Maybe that had helped. Nevertheless, I then had a cast for six weeks!!

Back to the photo, the Kahuna in this picture later did with us the same ceremonies that are done for kahuna initiation. These ceremonies are never done for the public, only as initiation. He said we were all at the same level, though from different pathways. One of these ceremonies was done on the edge of the crater of the volcano where he had himself been initiated twenty years before!! He did exactly the same ceremony with us!!

The reason this photo catches my attention now is because NEITHER THE KAHUNA NOR THE GUIDE ARE BEHAVING AS IF THERE IS ANY PROBLEM...ACTUALLY, THE OPPOSITE. THEY ARE BOTH SMILING AND LAUGHING...AND I AM TRYING TO JOIN IN!! And just why were they smiling and laughing?? I wasn't at all sure then, especially when I was in so much pain. Is it that perhaps they knew something that I did not yet comprehend, at least not for that moment??

I later learned that the very place where I had broken my leg was a Kahuna initiation site!! And that what happened was very similar in character to an initiation ritual!! Was it even possible that they knew that the pain I was in was only a very small part compared to the great gains made and to be made in the near future?? Was it that they knew there was MUCH more reason for celebration and joy than for anything but a momentary nod to the pain that is part of the path to get there?? At the time, I just had no idea why they were so joyous. Maybe now I can see the possibility, at least dimly.

Is that so very true in our lives in general?? I know when I wrote recently elsewhere about my "shamanic path to wisdom", it seemed all too similar to what I see and recall regarding this adventure in the rainforest. And, by the way, these two and others offered any help I needed along the way, but neither they nor anyone else there behaved in ANY way as if they felt "sorry" for me. Maybe they knew that the "injury"...the "break"...was only a small part of the great gains, both then and later. Unless I track them down again, maybe I'll never know. Then again, maybe I already do!! At least I have a strong feeling of intuition....

Great teachers they were, even now as I look at the photo many years later and learn even more from today's perspective!! Maybe we can all be grateful for the beings along our path who have helped us when we needed assistance, but not too much that it took the great teachings of the experience away from us!!

Blessings on the journey, Pauline