In Memory of Our Last Family Shaman
Last week marked the death anniversary of my favorite aunt, a woman who stood at the strange intersection of schizophrenia and the ability to see beyond the veil of reality. Whether it was her mental illness or her latent ability to perceive other dimensions that drew me to her, I can never quite decide.
I recall the only dream I’ve ever had of her, vivid and unforgettable. In it, I was in my old room at my other aunt's house — the house where I had lived throughout my college years. Half awake, I lay in bed when she suddenly appeared, her face peeking through the side window. Her expression was calm, yet there was a flicker of something radical in her eyes. She looked straight at me and said, “Walay langit ug impyerno” ("There is no heaven or hell").
The shock wasn’t just in the words themselves — though they were the most radical I'd ever heard from her — but in the fact that they came from her. She had always been deeply spiritual, even rigidly religious, a devout woman whose life had been shaped by her faith. But beneath that, she carried the weight of a traumatic event, one so severe that it triggered her schizophrenia and opened her mind to something deeper, something beyond the three dimensions we call home.
Sometimes I wonder — was that the price one pays to become a shaman? A balance between madness and vision? She seemed trapped in the push and pull of her rigid beliefs and her newfound abilities, her mind caught in a state of schizophrenic stasis. But when moments of clarity found her, she would spill forth with words of such wisdom that my soul, always hungry for the esoteric, couldn’t help but rejoice.
I’m thinking of her now because I’ve been reading The Chaos Protocols by Gordon White. One chapter focuses on reconnecting with one’s ancestors, and it immediately brought that dream back to me in a flash. In the dream, my aunt wasn’t sad or burdened. If anything, she seemed happy, even excited.
This — this is just a memorial for her, a way to remember.
Though, truth be told, I haven’t finished the chapter yet.
Who knows? Maybe that chapter will turn this post into something else, something beyond just a memory. Maybe it’s the beginning of some spiritual expansion.
But that’s for me to know and for you to wonder.