Following the instructions of spirit often means choosing a difficult path. I remember well the response of my teacher, Martin Prechtel to a student who said, "But, Martin, this homework is too hard." Martin replied, "That's good. It's supposed to be hard." I enjoy reading back issues of Shaman's Drum and recently came across this comment by Scott Frazier in an article by Tony Shiver in Number 52, Summer 1999 . In reference to Tony's question about smoking during a ceremony to help his niece Kate, Scott says "Tomorrow night, we will be fasting, and you can't smoke if you are fasting. Besides, a little suffering is what this is all about. Just keep Kate in mind--that's why you are here. A little suffering never hurts."When I follow the instructions of my spirit guidance, a little suffering seems to be part of the process. The Journey Oracle cards had many restrictions in their creation that both limited and expanded my creativity, because I was not able to only do what I wanted. Sometimes the seeking of an image on a painted shamanic drum takes many days, and although I know it would be easier to just invent something, I keep looking for what spirit wants me to see. The reward when I finally do have that deliciously Aha! sensation of "There you are; so it was you all along" is a kind of stereoscopic access simultaneously to the world of spirit and of this earth. David Abram writes so eloquently about both the difficult path and the reward when "a medicine person renders himself vulnerable to another, non-human form of experience."
So why do we resist this little suffering that comes from following a difficult path? Maybe because we insist on clinging to the illusion of comfort. I once did a stone divination, after years of learning how to speak to stones based on an introductory experience from a friend who had taken a Michael Harner neo-shamanic workshop. I was trying to understand how to journey to the spirit world and so asked this question: "What do I need to know?" The stone told me:
love your magic life
live up yet perform with sorrow
best become free from much care
have trust in subtlety
love from us cumbersome
That's good. Its supposed to be hard.
