My Voyage with Buryat Shaman Sarangerel

– Author Daniel

Ancestral Healing, Cultural Literacy, and Personal Integration

Sarangerel and I met in the planting season of 1999 found in Athens, Ohio, over a great cold beer. A weekend intensive hosted by my earliest teachers in earth spirituality. She was around to lead Bekki and Crow of the Church of Earth Curing. Of combined Mongolian and European origins, Sarangerel was in America after spending almost all of the previous 10 years residing in Russia and Mongolia training in the original ways of her Buryat Mongol ancestors. Her workshop provided my first experience with a shaman steeped in classic native culture, and the seeds planted that weekend continues to flourish in my own life today.

In the entire years following our initial engagement, my spiritual browsing took me from shamanic practice apart. I ended up being associated with Islamic Sufism and distanced myself from the interactions with the ancestors and assisting spirits that I had worked so toughly to cultivate as a novice shamanic professional. Fortunately, in later 2002 I was welcomed back by my forefathers and tutorials from my quantity of time in the clouds. This prompted a reconnection with Crow and Bekki in Ohio, an apprenticeship in California with a ceremonialist in Native American methods, and a standard revaluation of my past contact with various professionals of shamanism. It was during this time duration in early on 2003 that I preliminary dreamt of Sarangerel:
I simply remain in a construction that looks like a classic Greek temple with large rock pillars. There is typically some sort of brilliant coloured event happening upstairs. However, the structure is recognized by me is collapsing. As I get going to leave with others, I am halted in my own tracks near the entry as Sarangerel, and 2 shaman assistants go into the establishing regalia completely. I comprehend with certainty that supplied that she remains in the building, it will not collapse. I follow her back in, and on the stairwell, I tell her, “I’ll help you to I can, however.”
Upon waking, I understood that I to needed call her and pass on the deal of assistance. She ultimately replied and welcomed me to meet up at her house near Detroit. In this late 2003 check out, she shared in increased depth of her custom-made, and we made plans for her to come to California to supply Earth therapeutic event, shamanic training, and personal healing periods.
In the next 2 years I hosted Sarangerel to instruct and offer healings in the S.F. Bay Spot, and through her devotion to the spirits and likewise to the Earth, she touched the lives of numerous people. She remained in my own home throughout these sees, and we developed a strong, positive connection. I was deeply touched by her dedication to her people’s customs, her reverence for the forefathers and spirits, and her generosity, specifically towards those evaluated or marginalized by mainstream culture. I commenced frequently dreaming of her also, getting useful and unpredicted teachings.
The last time Sarangerel stayed with me, she left 2 tips of her event in my own apartment or condo. Initial, in my own freezer, she left many bottles of arshaan, empowered liquid, that she possessed blessed for deal with in the event. She also shared stories throughout that check out of standard Mongolians who saved a batch of arshaan picking generations by adding a little amount of the previously blessed liquid to a fresh container. Second, before leaving, she relied on me, positioned a set of pants in my own closet, and said, “It all’s traditional for a shaman to leave short articles of clothes discovered in an acknowledged location where they plan to return”. At the duration, I did not make either the arshaan or Sarangerel’s strategy to come back, as evidenced by her slacks in my own closet.

In later, in February of 2006, Sarangerel and I enjoyed a fantastic conversation that restored our enthusiasm to communicate. We made preparations for her to return for the 3rd cycle of healings and training over Summer Solstice. A week later on A, Sarangerel’s partner, contacted us to inform me in his severe Mongolian accent that she experienced died, and could I please let individuals understand. Although Sarangerel had been in and from the medical centre in years prior for health and wellness problems, her death was a complete shock to all folks. The physician’s description was some combo of acute infection and systemic failure.

In the whole weeks after her death, while planning her memorial ceremony, the next dream came:

Throughout the night, I remain on the 10th flooring of a high office. Sarangerel is leading some type of ceremony there. The weather condition exterior is definitely dark and rainy. I hear a loud ‘Boom’ noise and after that another. I surprise if the noise is absolutely thunder from the storm outside. The recurrence rate and intensity accumulate, ‘Boom, Boom, Boom’ and I question if it’s a drum. I all of a sudden comprehend it’s the floor covering surfaces above us dropping. The building is certainly collapsing and it’s almost to your floor. I am distinct that there is no chance of escaping the structure in time.

When I awoke, I kept in mind the earliest objective that led me to acquire Sarangerel. Then I comprehended that the building would not normally collapse in order she was inside long. Now, instantly, Sarangerel had “still left the structure” when i had actually used her back in. As a result of my option, I was placed to feel the weight of the collapsing floor surfaces above.

As I informed Sarangerel’s circle of loved ones and good friends of her passing, I wrestled with a complete range of feelings and reactions personally. I struggled with feeling dropped; that I executed her back into the collapsing establishing, and she suddenly left me there by itself and without her cover. In the entire years before her death, I went through agonizing frustrations and betrayals with two unique spiritual teachers, and those experiences fed the temptation to observe her loss of life as another exemplary case of me becoming deserted or warded off by Spirit. I felt baffled and discouraged, and I struggled to remain available to the pain of her passing instead of withdrawing.Amid my sorrow, I understood her work also, her tradition as a Mongolian shaman and teacher, and just how much would go unfinished without her. She acquired a book prepared on the Mongolian goddesses and the sacred feminine in Buryat shamanism. Unexpectedly this point of view had actually become more marble and concrete dropping through the ceiling. Although I have gratefully continued a handful of approaches Sarangerel taught me, including the “Peace Tree” ceremony, I hardly ever pictured myself in her function as one who could be in charge of preserving and renewing Mongolian shamanic traditions. I understood that I was not the only person in the building; there are many others who deeply loved her. Undoubtedly some Mongolian goddesses and other conventional spirits have actually also felt the increased loss of one of their children in the world.

In spite of all this, and regardless if I knew at the correct time of the first dream what I do now, I would connect with her still. I would even now follow her back in. In the five years given that Sarangerel authorized, slowly, I have actually come to discover her in her fresh form as an essential ancestral direction and ally. In addition to occasional meetings with her in the dream time, I call upon her assistance as a beloved forefather when leading earth recovery events and some of the shamanic treating sessions.

As a fierce warrior spirit and good-humoured, two-spirited therapist, I know my back is covered when I impression her to be present. These quick minutes of instinctive connection with Sarangerel are supported and reinforced through tangible, physical treatments like renewing and intending the arshaan she blessed while alive and participating in the focused discussion through divination within my forefather shrine.
Obviously, this latest kind of relationship will not negate the sadness and loss I’ve felt at her moving. In Fall 2008, I participated in a shamanism meeting in San Rafael. As I noticed going to Mongolian shamans that Sarangerel understood personally to discuss their custom, I became highly conscious that Sarangerel wanted to be physically present. Afterwards, I approached among the speakers, Batbayar Gonchigdorj, recognizing that Sarangerel had granted me his name many years prior as somebody I should call. Noticing her Spirit with me, I started to talk with Batbayar about Sarangerel, tearing streaming down my face. The children’s tune arose in my own mind and heart, “Ashes, ashes, all of us downfall.” Had We spoken Mongolian, We would not have been astonished if she had wished to enter my own body to converse instantly with Batbayar. Rather, the track seemed like her method of communicating a small amount of how much she avoided living and having the ability to talk to her Mongolian shaman friends and likewise a method for Spirit and the spirits to advise me how ultimately “we all fall down”.
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Sarangerel taught me as a result much about how precisely to connect with the ancestors. She encouraged genealogical exploration and shamanic ancestor to do the job I’ve finished with my biological spouse and children and lineages. She shared that her 2 key shamanic guides had actually been lineage ancestors from various sides of her family and friends. Through our conversations, literature, and training, I discovered confirmation and restored motivation for my efforts to reveal and bring back the positive medications along my bloodstream ancestral lineages. Through ceremonies just like the Peace Tree, she shared strong procedures for engaging the ancestors of the territory who might need help before they could work as beneficial forefathers. In each one of the seven celebrations I’ve led this ceremony since her moving, I have been touched by the terrific response from the human individuals and the spirits.
The weave of waking and dreaming that characterized my connection with Sarangerel during her presence continues now in unexpected methods after her death as we settle into a new sort of relationship. For instance, in 2005, when she visited, I dreamt:

Sarangerel is position near me. She has an 80-foot long black whip that she is seemingly comfortable utilizing. There exists a sense that she’d like to lead me in how exactly to use this over the duration. At the time, I have no concept of how I would actually begin even.

Personally, this dream talks to my very own practice of gradually entering a sensation of individual authority and self-confidence with ritualistic get the job done. On the three-time anniversary of Sarangerel’s moving, February 28th, 2009, I led a company to establish a 100% natural Mongolian-style stone-pile altar (ovoo) that included prayers for earth healing at the site of the past Almaden mercury mines near San Jose. I organized because of this ceremony months before I had understood it was the anniversary of Sarangerel’s passing. That day During ceremony, I noticed her strong assistance and even pride at the job we did.

8 weeks later on, in a close-by section of the mountains, by the end of a time of ceremony, I was cleaning garbage from a steep canyon by dragging out an extended, versatile bit of black pipeline or tubing. At the moment when I picked up the pipe, the picture the whip flooded my acknowledgement, collapsing for a crucial immediate sense of range in between Sarangerel and me. To use a symptom from Buryat Mongol customs that speaks to enough time of purpose and manifestation growing to be one, “Hoyor sagai negende!” or “Two times turning into one!” As I’ve tried to offer terms to my journey with Sarangerel here, I am staying with the impression that my establishing faith in traditional methods of relating with the spirits is presently the force stopping the setting up from collapsing, that in a single sense I am nowadays somebody who is being called to bring up the ceiling in my own life and running to Earth and network.

Alamaden Mountain Shrine
In one reading of my journey with Sarangerel, our relationship has collapsed; Sarangerel can be dead. And yet in another, I am following her back into the building still. In this very same minute of turning to perform her, I am picking up the mantle of earth ceremony and the 80-foot shaman whip in the middle of the debris. I am saying yes to the vision of initiation and empowerment that Sarangerel has actually held for me by expressing to the spirits. And under the progressively long-lasting shelter and roofing system provided by these older ways of knowing, I am grateful for the fruits that continue to manifest from my romance with Sarangerel as a cherished forefather.