Shamanic Transformations by Itzhak Beery

Author:Itzhak Beery
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Shamanism
Publisher: Inner Traditions / Bear & Company
Published: 2015-07-20T16:00:00+00:00

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A Pathway to Transformation

Raymond Nobriga

Reflecting back, my life has been a shamanic journey. My initiation began at the age of three and a half, when I fell out of my parents’ car as it was traveling on a highway in northern California. An ambulance returning to a nearby hospital was right behind our car and, witnessing this event, picked me up and transported me to the hospital. There I was administered last rites. According to my parents’ account of the attending physician’s statement, my will to live was strong and I survived. They treated my concussion and the lacerations but could not repair the resulting partial facial paralysis.

Over the next three and a half years my parents took me to doctors at every major hospital in the San Francisco Bay Area. We were repeatedly told that no surgical procedure could correct my condition. I was very despondent and feeling sorry for myself due to the seeming hopelessness of correcting my disfiguration and “unique” appearance.

When I was seven, I was sponsored by a member of the Shriners organization, which allowed me to be examined by a physician at the Shriners Hospital for Crippled Children in San Francisco, a facility that specialized in the treatment of children suffering the effects of the polio that was rampant in the 1950s. Intrigued by my case, this physician designed a new surgical procedure that he believed would restore feeling to the right side of my face and provide some limited muscle control.

The surgery was performed and the results were successful. I was in recovery at Shriners Hospital for two and a half months, during which time I was not allowed physical contact with my family; all patients were quarantined due to the susceptibility of polio patients to viruses. The only way I could communicate with my family was by speaking with them through a window screen near my bed.

During the period of my hospitalization, the Shriners organization sponsored a college all-star football game as a fund-raiser for their hospital. We patients were each assigned a football player for whom we would make crafts or a piece of artwork, which would then be presented to the player during his visit to the hospital in advance of the game. The players brought each of us an autographed football and visited with us. My player was an All-American from Colorado, and during our visit he asked me if I would like to play catch with him. Of course I was thrilled by his offer, and as all of us patients were confined to the indoors, the two of us stood in the middle of the ward and played catch. It was then that I noticed the look of sadness in the eyes of the other boys who were confined to their beds and, due to their paralytic condition, could not participate. At that moment I realized how fortunate I was for my mobility.

This experience helped me to begin to shift my prior awkwardness of looking “different” to one wherein I could appreciate my “uniqueness.

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