The Shaman, The Stone and Being Here Now

20150820_155737
This is a story of a beautiful day and how it accidentally came about, rather like a dream. Last Thursday night I was attending a wonderful kirtan organized by Stan Holt of Swaha Productions. We are all sad because Stan is turning over the reins to someone else. I spoke to him as my son and I left for the night. “Stan,” I said, “Please let me know when Don Theo will be back in town.”

“Oh, he’s gonna be here next week,” he said. He had forgotten I wanted a heads-up so I would be sure to schedule a session with Theo. He is in Atlanta twice a year, giving talks on healing and doing energy sessions with people. I wrote about my first visit with him last year. He had managed in less than an hour to lift the grief of a lifetime for me.

Back in December, the week before Christmas, I got so sick with the flu that I was hallucinating, or so I thought. Today I shared the dream with Theo and he was surprised and yet smiling broadly at me, I knew that in between the lines, he knew all about it. That is just how he is.

There is little information about Don Theo Paredes on the internet and I suspect he prefers it that way. I did get his permission to write about today, though. He also was happy to receive the paperback of Bigger Than The Sky. Holding it between his hands, he said it felt beautiful to him and that he looked forward to reading it.

And before I knew it, we were launched into a discussion about awakening. “This book doesn’t sell,” I said, because it isn’t ‘sexy’.” And he laughed. He said, “You know how it is? You go into a bookstore and look through lots of books until one catches your eye. And you read it and tell someone else how much you like it. That is how this little book will get around.”

“How do you do it?” I said, changing the subject momentarily. “I mean, how do you travel so much giving energy healings and such?” He said that it was a matter of people wanting to be close to you. Saying this, he touched his shoulder gently to mine as we stood over the massage table. “People want what you have, which is the ability to stay in the moment.”
“I don’t know a thing,” I told him, laughing at the confession and how easy it was to talk to him. “I know,” he said, “I am the same way. Just being here; that’s all.”

“That’s what Bigger Than The Sky is about,” I said. And I told him about Peter and the cats and how writing to him had opened my world up so wide.

“Let me read it,” Theo said, and we’ll see what happens.”

I told him about picking up the stone from Agata’s front porch after the healing I got from him last year. Agata died of stomach cancer six months later. Now I have the stone and I asked Theo if he would bless it for me and he was happy to. When I got back to the waiting room, I couldn’t find it in my purse.

I went to ask Theo if I had left it in the room but I hadn’t. “Maybe a gnome took it,” he said with a big chuckle. And I thought about the story Ramana Maharshi told about the gold necklace that the woman forgot was around her throat. The stone was buried in my purse and I found it while Rob and I were eating dinner. Just so, I can’t lose my own conscious knowledge of who I am.

I am going to post a photo of Theo and I at Decatur Healing Arts. The last thing that happened was the re-entry of Stan Holt into the story. He seems to have bookended it. First him saying that Theo would be in town and suddenly he comes through the door of DCA wheeling his bike behind him. He is also a healer and was there to see a client. He went to Peru with Theo this past June and knows him well.

So Theo, Stan and Rob and I stood together in a circle of light and power. And I am not kidding when I say that. My life is blooming into a glorious melange of everything good.

Theo told me I had to really work on doing neck exercises and getting acupressure or acupuncture until I get more range of motion. More than that, what I experienced with him is totally beyond words. Conjure Peruvian mountain ranges, mystical dreams, awakening, synchronicity and plain old Atlanta, Georgia, meeting head on. Gotta love it. And I do.

Vicki Woodyard

5 Comments

Comments welcomed....