The Voices in My Head - Part VI

I’m not schizophrenic, but sometimes I hear voices. They’re not loud, but they’re assertive and are really part of a tide of knowingness that I’ve experienced at different times in my life. So when I woke to a voice that told me I was to spend my next birthday in Santa Fe taking Ayahuasca, I wasn’t surprised.

THIS IS PART 6 of an EIGHT-PART STORY

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8

My mother had not communicated with anyone in months, but that afternoon she communicated with me. She didn’t speak in words. Instead she looked into my eyes and what I saw there was a love I hadn’t seen since I was a child. As I spoke to her – and I did speak a few words aloud – she kept her eyes fastened to mine. “You are to follow the light,” I said, repeating the words the Ayahuasca guide had told me. “See that little bit of light at the edge of the darkness? Follow it, and it’ll take you where you need to go.” Then I assured her she’d always be in my heart and that I would always be there for her.

The remarkable thing is it worked, it clicked, she clearly understood what I was saying.

To my amazement, this wordless, almost lifeless old woman slumped in her chair raised her arm slowly, slowly and reached out to touch my chest. I was practically shaking with emotion.

She had taken in my words and we had some sort of deal, though I had no idea what this actually meant. I will tell you, however, that when I left her apartment that afternoon, she seemed lighter, freer, more animated, almost as if she had lost fifty pounds of psychic weight.

Three weeks later she was gone.

A week after the funeral, I was back in Austin and attending an afternoon dance in a large sunlit studio. As I was moving my body, shaking out my limbs, I heard my mother’s voice in my ear. It was very distinct, very emphatic. “Do this dance, this exact dance when the next practitioner comes to town.”

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I was a member of Austin’s ecstatic dance community. You didn’t need knowledge or training for that, only a desire to move your body to music that formed a wave, starting slow, going faster and faster, then slowing down again. Usually we danced on Fridays and Sundays, but this particular afternoon dance was a one-off put together by a trained facilitator who wasn’t one of our regular leaders. My mother had been very specific: Do this exact dance when the next practitioner comes to town. 

That would be in six weeks, a practitioner flying in from California. I signed up for her class immediately, not thinking there was anything strange about being guided by a dead woman’s voice.

Cover Image: Zoltan Tasi

Next: Read The Voices in My Head Part 7 >>