The Lotus in the Mud: Enlightenment from Adversity
by Lynn Andrews

"Gently,” Shakkai said to me. “The wind is calling you. She asks that you return to your original joy. In a way, your pain has brought you to me, and it is good. Without your pain, you could not bear the joy that is soon to be yours.”

“Forgive me, Shakkai,” I interrupted. “But how do you mean, ‘Without my pain?”

“Your pain has given you depth, a way to open your spirit. Never think that there is not a reason for everything that happens.”

I am very much a modern woman, with all the foibles of our time: difficult childhood with a bipolar, raging father; marriage, children, and divorce; wandering from profession to profession looking for something with substance and meaning. Almost as a mirror of our world, my life has been filled with glorious highs and unbearable lows, often tumultuous, but always inspirational once the dust settles and I find myself still standing.

Years ago, as an art dealer searching for a rare piece of native art called a “marriage basket,” something happened that changed my world forever. I found Agnes Whistling Elk and Ruby Plenty Chiefs, two native shaman women from Canada who took me on as their apprentice, to learn an ancient feminine spirituality passed down from mother to daughter, shaman to apprentice, in an unbroken chain, for thousands of years. Theirs is the world of spirit, the ancient knowledge and wisdom derived from millenniums of studying how to use the power and energy moving through the universe toward a higher purpose in life.

Shakkai is one of the guides with whom I have had the great opportunity to work, as I’ve traveled through time and space with Agnes and Ruby for 35 years, always with one foot planted firmly in the world of the physical and one foot in the world of spirit.

There is tremendous stress is in our lives, from global calamity and an imperiled environment, to the heartache of finances, personal relationships or parenting during this difficult time in human history. Agnes and Ruby often remind me that human beings were never intended to live with the amount of pressure and confusion that we face in our world today. It is because of this chaos that they, along with other shamans across the globe, have come forward to return the sacred teachings of harmony and spiritual power that inspired and sustained civilizations for tens of thousands of years before the modern world turned away.

As Agnes once said, “One of the great teachings of this time in history is learning how to live one’s life with the stress of three or four lives all at once and still maintain your center, ease, and joy–a very, very difficult thing to do. Even knowing this, I was having a difficult time accepting what Shakkai was trying to tell me about embracing the pain. I wanted to learn about enlightenment, not retrace my pain, so I asked Ruby about it:

“When tearing away a veil of ignorance from your vision–veils of ignorance carried from generations of conditioning– another one replaces it and it seems we never get anywhere. As we move through this
existence, problems beset us at every turn. For many years, this tragedy filled my heart with anger, as I fought side by side with my people for our lost borders, the land that is our Great Mother.

This earth is a great schoolhouse, teaching you whatever you need to learn. For each of us, those teachings are different. In this lifetime you have hard lessons about family, commitment, and God. Some lessons are painful because they demand that you change, no matter how hard it is. You have to shift and change to grow. Remember, enlightenment is contained within the process of movement. Without movement, there is no life. Pain is a great teacher, if we open ourselves to the lesson; sometimes, our pain is the only gateway to certain levels of enlightenment.”

Once, as Shakkai and I were walking near her pond, she placed her hands into the water and held up a beautiful lotus blossom:

“This lotus blossom for a long time germinated in the mud, out of the mud into the light of day, into the magnificent flower that you see. The chaos of life–the madness, pain, agony, and evil surrounding the human condition on so many levels, is represented by the mud. It’s a miracle that something so beautiful as this blossom could grow out of mud. It is so hard for us to find our way through the mud, to celebrate the seeds of knowledge that we plant there. We must find those seeds and give them life.”

That is what sacred shamanic study is all about, finding and nurturing the seeds of innocence and wisdom planted in all the experiences of our lives. It is understanding and accepting that it is the darkness which defines the light, that those who upset us most are our greatest teachers. This is a hard lesson to learn, because who wants to go back through the most painful moments of our life to find the seeds of wisdom planted there?

If we do not honor the dark side, if we do not honor our pain, then we will be ruled by the dark side and our pain. To understand the darkness does not mean you become it. You must look at it and understand it, examine it carefully and know what it is made of. And then turn your face away and let the light be your guide. Choosing not to honor our pain is one of the veils of ignorance that we carry, but through all the veils of ignorance, the truth and goodness of life and nature will survive.

Lynn Andrews is the best-selling author of the Medicine Woman series, which includes her book, Shakkai, Woman of the Sacred Garden. Learn more at www.lynnandrews.com.