Inspiration, Heart

Mountain in Ecuador

A call is only a monologue. A return call, a response, creates a dialogue…and in Latin there is even a correspondence between the words for listening and following.          Gregg Levoy

Scorpion Woman calls to Jan…

I was one hundred miles away from any road or path traveling down the Amazon River in Ecuador. As co-leader and one of the faculty members of a study away adventure with twenty college students I was seated in the first of several hallowed out trees which served as canoes taking us away from our base camp, to our individual family home stays. I would spend the night with a family whose community members used to be known as the head-hunters of the Amazon. It’s the middle of the night, and because I was considered a guest, always an honor in this community, the father of the family placed palm leaves on the ground for my bed. The air was filled with the sounds of bats flying, dogs chewing on chicken bones, wild pigs rustling in the bushes, and a gentle rain shower adding a constant melody to it all. In spite of the sounds both inside and outside the hut (inside and outside my head), exhausted from days of hiking and exploring, within moments I fell deeply asleep. Suddenly, I awoke to a sharp sting on my left foot.

The pain was considerable and my left leg went numb. However, in that moment from some inner sense or way of knowing I knew everything would be fine. I don’t speak Shuar, the native language, but in the morning the father, who happened to be the son of a shaman, communicated that the sting was from a scorpion, and I was not in any real danger. Again, I trusted my inner guidance, and the wisdom in the face of this man. After spending the day gardening and remaining present to the beauty of the jungle, I was taken by canoe (navigated by an eight-year-old boy) to the group’s base camp where another shaman looked at the spot where I was stung. He sucked the poison out of my foot, smiled, and walked into the jungle to retrieve a leaf. He chewed the leaf, smiled again, and applied the salve from the leaf to my foot.

I begin with this story because I experience much of life, including how I learn, through the lens of what might be called my intuitive, imaginative, or an inner way of knowing. My interest in following my heart and pursuing a doctorate also relates to the telling of this story.

In spring 2005, I asked undergraduate students in my class, A Holistic Approach to Healing, to complete a personal holistic assessment questionnaire. The assessment asks students to evaluate their emotional, physical, spiritual, mental, and environmental wellness. It also asks how satisfied they feel in their current life situation. Only three out of thirty-three students responded that they felt personally connected or grounded in their college experience. The other thirty students wanted to talk about feeling unsettled – which we did.

Then, I told my students the story of my adventure in Ecuador, to capture their interest and generate discussion about the possibilities of healing from different cultural perspectives. As I told the scorpion story, I opened a passageway for some students to reveal that they experience the world, including learning, through ways of knowing that they do not always feel able, or encouraged, to discuss. They described ways of knowing similar to what I described as the inner guidance I experienced in Ecuador.

This does not necessarily mean those experiencing such inner ways of knowing are more intuitive. However, based on a theory by early twentieth century psychiatrist, Carl Jung, those that strongly experience such inner ways of knowing, may experience situations first, and primarily, through a noncognitive lens. Such noncognitive lenses include sensing, intuiting, or feeling. The class discussion that followed was about the relief students felt in being able to acknowledge, and have respected, unique ways of knowing.

I grew up believing that learning was about memorizing, about how well you could use your logical, rational brain, and about how well you could manipulate the system. My grades in school were very good, but I was haunted by the fact that I learned most productively and with a greater sense of satisfaction when I allowed other parts of myself to be engaged in the process of learning. I gave up talking with adults (such as the nuns whose classes I sat in for nine years) about it because when I did, I was labeled eccentric, artsy, new age – none of which felt very positive. And so at an early age I quickly learned to keep quiet and adapt to the system. As a result, I felt alienated from what I perceived as the normal way of being and learning.

When I was an undergraduate this quiet adaptation of my inner voice, gently but powerfully surfaced. On a beautiful fall day, as I was standing outside one of the many brick buildings at Keene State College, in 1981, I was struck by a sense, an inner pull, to major in psychology. I went directly to my adviser’s office. I was excited to have settled on a major that felt perfect for me. His response was “What will you do with that?” All the old messages reinforcing my unique way of processing and making decisions came flooding back. I saw my adviser as more of an authority on my life than my internal authority. I declared my major, nutrition, and once again buried my inner voice.

I received an undergraduate and master’s degree in human services and nutrition. I entered the workforce. Throughout my first career in healthcare I was met with continued resistance to my unique worldview, to questions about treating the whole person instead of the illness (this was the 1980s and the wellness movement was just starting to emerge). I was labeled a “hippie”. My contributions were respected as long as I played within the conservative western approach to healthcare and didn’t challenge those views. At the time, the views of many in the western medical establishment included believing that the body is separate from the mind, separate from the spirit, and separate from emotions. I could not work within that philosophical model. It was at that point that I decided to pursue a second graduate degree in transpersonal psychology.