Metacognitive Writing Strategies :: The Sacred Student-Teacher Relationship & The Akashic Realm :: Roksana Badruddoja, Ph.D. :: Field Notes

In this installment of My Nakshi Kantha Shawl: Metacognitive Writing Strategies, author and Shamanic counselor Dr. Roksana Badruddoja documents another critical dimension of their writing practice: the sacred student-teacher relationship in the Shamanic tradition. Stay tuned for the third and final installment of this radical Field Notes entry in which Dr. Badruddoja’s delineates their theory-and-practice of writing as inner-knowing. [2018–19 series editor: Adrian Silbernagel]

My second point of access to creation flow is a resilient and sacred student-teacher relationship with my shamanic mentor Brother Baltazar Villareal[5]. Brother wisely reminds me the path to healing myself and my family (which includes my ancestors and descendants) is to steep myself in everyday reality versus living outside of it. In support, humanitarian Maya Tiwari/Mother Maya (Sri Swami Mayatitananda) imparts it is important to have at least one foot in this world and avoid excess puritanism (Radja 2018). Brother Baltazar is my teacher, guide, mentor, therapist, friend, brother, confidant and colleague. My studies with Brother take place with great honor, love, respect, gratitude and safety. The lessons Brother teaches me are: Allow the experience of pain to flow through me with love, walk through grief with honor, accept the gifts that come from our losses with gratitude and remain grounded by living in respectful ceremony with the everyday. He assists me to Remember the most sacred act we can participate in is to remain connected to our Earth Walk as humans on Mother Earth. Brother Baltazar lovingly transmits sacred gifts to me, universal secrets/teachings of the Universe, and patiently awaits my Arrival.

The third pathway to create writing space in my heart, body and mind is through the hallowed and protected Akashic realm. The Akashas are a vibrant creative stream of unconditional loving and evolving energy one can access through the calling of the heart and a dedicated integrity to walking the Red Road. Akemi G. (2014) explains,

The Akashic Records are the energetic records of all souls about their past lives, the present lives, and possible future lives. Each soul has its Akashic Records, like a series of books with each book representing one lifetime. The Hall (or Library) of the Akashic Records is where all souls’ Akashic Records are stored energetically. In other words, the information is stored in the Akashic field (also called zero point field). The Akashic Records, however, are not a dry compilation of events. They also contain our collective wisdom.

Through my Akashic apprenticeship with former ARCI⁠[6] — a mystery school — instructor Sister Tara Jolley, I learn to create a vibrational key with a protected prayer — the Sacred Prayer Method[7] — to open myself to receiving information in many layers from my Akashic Records[8]. As I recite the sacred prayer, my muscles loosen, my breath lengthens and my heart softens with discernment. My spatial embodiment becomes tender and vast. My fierce, protective, loving, relaxed and serene Record Keepers step forward to help ground me into clarity with intentionality so that I may hold my Light expansively with confidence. Hissing with a raspy sound, my Record Keepers convey: “Allow your Gifts to shine. You need not hide anymore.” I settle into the experiences of my (higher) consciousness through curious observations (without judgment). Time collapses. The past, present and future converge across multiple timelines. Void. I am still while in motion and I am in motion while still. I am here, there, everywhere and nowhere. I am awake to my body, emotions and thoughts. I journal to facilitate the flow of information with pure focus.

Journaling in my Records enables me to delineate my belief systems and how I evaluate aspects of my life, search for reoccurring life themes and document my transformation (birth/death/re-birth). Ortiz (2002), a poet and leader in the Native American literary renaissance, is relevant. In “Culture and the Universe”, he expresses with reverence:

Two nights ago

in the canyon darkness,

only the half-moon and stars,

only mere men.

Prayer, faith, love,

existence.

We are measured

by vastness beyond ourselves.

Dark is light.

Stone is rising.

I don’t know

if humankind understands

culture: the act

of being human

is not easy knowledge.

With painted wooden sticks

and feathers, we journey

into the canyon toward stone,

a massive presence

in midwinter.

We stop.

Lean into me.

The universe

sings in quiet meditation.

We are wordless:

I am in you.

Without knowing why

culture needs our knowledge,

we are one self in the canyon.

And the stone wall

I lean upon spins me

wordless and silent

to the reach of stars

and to the heavens within.

It’s not humankind after all

nor is it culture

that limits us.

It is the vastness

we do not enter.

It is the stars

we do not let own us.

Ortiz cajoles me to GROUND (into my Earth Walk), REMEMBER and ALLOW with fidelity. In this way, I create a bridge between the below and the above and the above with the below to open a gate to usher in the Blessings. Curandero psychologist Miro-Quesada (2016) calls this “imitative magic”. In his teachings, don Oscar shares with us high ceremonial words or kapak-seemee (in Quechua) of the Inca people:

Eeya

Teksee-mooyo

Thaithanchis

Weera-kocha,

Pacha kamak

Hampooi, Hampooi

He passes on to us the prayer vibrationally opens a shamanic doorway that serves to facilitate the merging of Self with the Universe. The Akashas support me to walk in my daily life with personal truth and lucidity and my Records are a source of indestructible protection. Journaling (re-)connects me to my Heart, Healing and Spirit. I brainstorm with the Universe in this way!

[5] Brother Baltazar is a Magi, a Holistic Practitioner who has lives the Red Road for fifty years. He is a practicing MFT as a Behavior Specialist in the Sex Offender Program at Coalinga State Hospital (CA) and researches the impacts of race on sex offenders who identify as men.

[6] Akashic Records Consultants International, Inc. or ARCI was found by Mary Parker in 2001. Educated by Johny Prochaska, Parker began teaching in 1984 in Albuquerque, NM.

[7] See http://akashicrecordstraining.com/2011/08/the-history-of-the-prayer/.

[8] Brother Baltazar shares a story with me about the Akashic Records: The Akashas were once close to Mother Earth, twelve feet away, and freely accessible to everyone without prayer. By Atlantian time, the Akashas were misused and, as a protective mechanism, the Akashas floated away.

Dr. Roksana Badruddoja is a feminine/masculine woman of color, an interfaith and cross-cultural womanist, a critical race theorist and gender scholar, an urban shamanic practitioner, a tenured professor of sociology and women and gender studies and a queer mother to fierce energy beings. They teaches courses on feminist research methods, women of color in the U.S., race and resistance, codes of gender, sex and violence, social inequalities and feminist activism. And they is the author of Eyes of the Storms: The Voices of South Asian-American Women, the editor of “New Maternalisms”: Tales of Motherwork and a contributor of Good Girls Marry Doctors: South Asian Daughters in Obedience and Rebellion. Dr. Badruddoja thinks deeply, everyday, about how vulnerability is imagined, the practices of solidarity and what it means to be of service to the marginalized. They writes and teaches with a sense of painful urgency fueled by a ferocious and unwavering commitment to trauma healing. Dr. Badruddoja seeks to occupy a sanctuary to nurture their enthusiasm for narratives driven by representations of women, cultural criticism, trauma and healing and engage with unique collaborators who will dare to innovate, take risks and express something meaningful about our world with them.