I go to the Wellspring on hands and knees. I cannot lift myself up. I am heavy. My palms press into the dirt, the small rocks biting. I hear the Wellspring, the delicate splashing, but cannot lift myself to her. The breeze is in the trees and a flittering of birds. The world is light and I am heavy.

I call for the help of a guiding spirit. I call for help in the night’s quest. I don’t know if anyone will come. I am so broken. Then I realize there is someone standing at my shoulder. I see white moccasins and leggings. I turn my head to look up and up to see something simple and complicated about his head, smooth plains with projections, maybe feathers, maybe… antlers. It’s Deer Man. Recognition floods over me sweetly. It’s Deer Man come for me, of course it is. He keeps coming for me. He keeps coming and holding out his hand. I am so grateful.

I take his hand and he raises me up. I ask the question: “What core belief is blocking me from being able to move forward?”

He turns to lead me away. Its the first time I’ve seen him move. He goes quickly. I follow. He shrinks down smaller and smaller. I can’t follow. I stop. He disappears. I stand fretting. He gets big again and looks at me, gestures for me to follow, shrinks down to ant size. I just can’t. I hang there. I begin to cry. “I can’t. I can’t. It’s too hard. I don’t know how.”

Deer Man is standing large again looking at me pointedly, patiently. That’s it then. The core belief is: I can’t. It’s too hard. I don’t know how.

“Oh. Oh. Can you take THAT from me?” Wouldn’t that be amazing?

The Deer Man holds the golden bowl to collect my tears. He turns and raises the bowl of tears to the moon. Moonlight blesses the water with forgiveness. He turns back to me and begins to extract the slivers of this belief which are like pins holding me together. He drops them into the blessed tears and they dissolve there. I see him remove bits like safety pins that have held me all tucked up and bunched. With the pins removed I flow. He runs his hands down the fabric of me, smoothing out the wrinkles.

My heart is burning, aching. He reaches into me and pulls out my heart, holding it cupped and protected in his hands. He breathes over it: “You can. You can. You can.” In all these days of meetings, these are the first words I’ve heard him utter. They wash all the pain from my heart. He gives it back to me. And when he does, I bend at the waist, crumple down to the ground. I think I have fallen into a big tangle, but then I realize that all of that stuff that fell, the great bulk of me, is simply the manifestation of this core belief of inability. It is not ME fallen to the ground at all, it was like the clothes I was wearing. What remains of me is pure light, upright, lithe and easy.

“Thank you. Thank you.” I say, “How can I thank you?” I raise my hands to him.

He takes my right hand and lifts it to his mouth. He licks my palm and then blows across it. When he does that a sort of sparkling effervescence rises from my hand. “This is where you give from,” he instructs. “Not from your head. Not from your mouth. You heal with your hands. Be generous and present with your hands.”

I lift my hands to either side of his face. The sparkling washes over him. This is all the thanks he desires.

OOO