Chapter 17 The Medicine Place from my book Changes

Chapter 17

The Medicine Place

In Phil 1, the meditation to my medicine place went basically the same as it had at home, only in Phil 1, Tom expanded my experience by guiding us to take in the medicine place with greater sensory awareness, and to explore and play more, with the gentle sounds of Kitaro music in the background.

Tom limits our travel in the realm of spirit to our own personal medicine place in Phil 1, which is our personal playground and workspace.  We don’t go beyond that until later, in Phil 2.

When we were first led in meditation, we set the trigger to the Sacred Silence as I explained very briefly in Chapter 16, and which Tom describes in much greater detail in his book Awakening Spirits beginning on page 142.

Next, we were taken through this long form meditation to set the trigger to the Sacred Silence, but when we took that final deep but gentle breath to surrender, instead of surrendering to the Sacred Silence and coming back to the physical, we surrendered to the beginning of the path of our subconscious mind.

Each person gets to discover, or create, what that path looks like and what it is surrounded by.  By imagining it as we want it to be, we are creating an anchor for ourselves to easily return to our subconscious mind.  In some ways, we are discovering the path, and in some ways we choose what we want it to look like.  We are told it will end up becoming what it has always been.

As we walked the path, Tom had us really use our senses to make the place real for us.  We were told to notice the smells, the temperature, the humidity or lack thereof, the surroundings, what the path was made of, and to reach down and touch the path.  I laid down on my path to really feel it.   

Tom had us walk along the path awhile, then notice some steps up ahead on the right.  When we got to the steps, we paused, facing down the steps, and we were told to notice what everything looked and felt like.  What was on each side of the steps?  What were the steps made of?  Did it have a railing to hold onto?  If so, what was the railing like?  Tom had us take a moment and sit down on the steps and touch them with our hands and feel their texture.  Then we were directed to stand back up and continue down the steps.

The steps represented the rest of the force, as in life force.  Tom told us that the subconscious mind is a part of the force, but a more personal part.

With each step down, we went deeper into our meditation.  At the bottom of the stairs, there was a little landing where we were instructed to stop, and again pay attention to our surroundings.  We listened to any sounds we might hear.  We noticed any smells.  We touched the things around the landing.  And we were told to notice an archway that was in front of us as we stood on the landing.

The archway is the door to our personal medicine place in the spirit world, and there is a veil within the archway that prevents us from seeing what is on the other side until we step through.

The medicine place is what you create it to be, and can have snowy mountains up against dry deserts, or tropical islands up against an iceberg.  You can play with wild animals, breathe underwater, swim with dolphins, and fly with eagles, to mention a few possibilities.  And in my case, fly with my lion.

During Phil 1 we each had a partner that we did certain exercises with.  One of the exercises we did was to take our partner to our medicine place and show them around.  Then they would take us to theirs.  After each journey we would discuss our experience.  This was to prove to us that the medicine place was a real place.  Some people had vivid experiences and saw exactly what their partner showed them, and felt what their partner handed them.  Some were not as successful, but had smaller success.

So many of the things Tom had us do, I approached with fear of failure.  Especially when we did partner exercises.  I was afraid I would not be perceptive.  I was afraid to say what I experienced in the partner exercise because I was afraid I would fail.  When I was the guest in my partner’s medicine place, to say what I experienced made me feel like I was sticking my neck out, only to be wrong.

That fear came from lack of experience, or “dirt time” as Tom would say.  Over the years of attending Tom’s school, I learned to trust myself, but that took a long time.  During the classes I attended, we were sent out to do so many things I thought would be impossible, only to find out that they were possible.  And the things that were possible blew my mind.

Learning to trust myself and my experiences, through these exercises, was a huge milestone in learning to become more aware on all levels, and especially to learn to trust myself.