Okay. So there we were. Marin was heavensent for preparing for such an undertaking. And I was nestled in a sweet location there. Back in the woods, on the deer trail. My beautiful Alyson Lynn was a heavensent player lol she was a spirit then and her, Jerry, and myself did a lot of goofing, learning about how to interact with spirits in a way that kept them going (happy and fed lots of love and enjoyment) and I was done with the hardcore training I needed for such an undertaking, so I arranged to make a few passes at one very sore spot - the exact feeling that Jerry himself (still holding onto such pain) had when he passed from body to his now gorgeous astral-body only. He was sad, confused, hurt, angry. Lots of things inside. And his friend, now just Bobby to me and then too, would call out in hurt to think about it. You can't get close to your own loved ones always, right after they transform. We like to think it's easy for the spiritual folks, the shaman, the healers, and mediums - but if it's your own loved one, your feelings block you from getting all that close for very long. Sometimes. Not always. And on a good day, you're feeling ready to roll, and what then? Then the spirit's screwed up about some feeling of grief from no longer being able to join you in your adventure in his or her body anymore. It's gets all confused. So I brought my might lol my mutant superpower to bear on this intense issue. We took 3 days. Not all in a row. And repeated the same type of activity to try to clear this blocking of their ability to enjoy their new style of relating to each other. He, the other guy, and me. We did the same thing three times. I'd like to take a moment to explain what a shamanic journey is, but I'd really rather you go search and find out. Because me explaining it is really a different type of class lol. I am from a multi-cultured and varied mindset. And I pull language from many different religious mindsets, and from academia, and from the schools of thought associated with modern and traditional mediumship. For example (and a wild tangent) - I loathe the world resonance. So I might totally avoid ever using a word that people might want to learn to understand this. I love the word entrain, since I studied altered states of consciousness in college at the University of Rochester, in the B section of the library there, you'd find me with dusty books and a big happy smile on my face. So resonance is a useful thing to learn. Also my traditional training in shamanism was as hand-picked piece by piece as this letter is, so I got what I needed from some great sources and I will say we (all three of us) engaged in a sort of shamanic journey, together, to a world where we could recreate the (cue ominous music) the 'death scene' and have Bobby right there to say goodbye. Like he needed to. Right there. Three more times than anybody really ever wants to. With humor, charity, and good luck, we took that journey together, and the result was very positive to begin with.
Why don't you enjoy this picture of Snoopy wigging out in the forest with some bunnies for a moment or two, then finish the story - it's still there after the picture. It's under the picture lol.
Well, I talk about this as if it's all very simple and just willy-nilly came to pass. It didn't. You have to work up to such types of experiences. Or - how do I say this? - you break your mind, your ego becomes unhinged, and you lose touch with the common reality that we all use to join together in a workable society of living, working-together beings, striving for a common lifestyle. So don't go fast. I had a great teacher, how always warned me (because I can't ever stop thinking about it) that you can get to the top of the mountain in one of two ways lol. You can pause and rest on the long road that winds around and around the same dang mountain, until you finally reach a nice big pinnacle to your experience. Or, you can go straight up the side of it. Even with the best of equipment lol that path is fraught with danger! You can fall, slam into the side of the cliff you're hanging on. Get attacked by a flying vulture, if you get my meaning. In other words. Fast is not always best. And with exploits of the mind, and altering your awareness, please do be careful! People like to say - in fact the spirit form of Neal Cassady once counseled me to "drive as fast as you can - you can always slam on your brakes if you have to." Frankly, I find that very Neal. Who died at a very young age, leaving behind a loved one or two without him to carry on all by themselves. How about we add... "Always wear your seatbelt so if you slam on your brakes, you'll be safe!" Adding that makes me feel a lot better about talking about these things to people who might try things they did not learn about via the slow path up the mountainside. Cool?
Bob was a natural telepath at the time, and had a whole bag of tricks from all his years entraining with other people on tour. He never minded me telling this story, so it's not breaking any confidence to say he had also a nice ability to do a little out of body traveling, some remote viewing, a little more of this and that, to make for a nice candidate for this work. Him and I were already a team of hijinks when it came to brining our awarenesses together, entrained, merging not just our energies that way but visually bringing our beings together to trip the light fantastic as it were. Ever see an astral being or any other type of entity in your mind's eye, as I'd call it, as you two connect and lock in together? Well lots of people talk with the spirit (and other) world that way. It's in that space that we started. Bobby and I would merge that parts of our minds, and it drops you very far into another mode of being. I could still dance, he could still play. We did this part at a few shows. It was epic lol. I really enjoyed being there for it. I could have said let's do it in some chanty arena, like a gong-filled room in Fairfax with the moon over Mt. Tam to calm him down, with Om on my CD player lol. But this was a more sensational and actually calming way to go about it. Down inside our minds, we joined our imageric selves and began to journey together... to a room I created as the journey-leader. I am a big big fan of starting such inner-space activities with an entrance. A detailed entrance makes for... a place for other spirit guides to interact, habit which makes it much easier to go back the next time, a lead-in time where feelings can stir upward and people start to relax. The way in for us here was to sneak past a guard. One who each time announced himself as 'acolyte' to me - his word. He was cloaked in black, hooded. Had a face shield that looked medieval to us. He would not let us pass readily.
As a side note, many of the Grateful Dead family members report of encountering these 'guards' as they travel to the other realms that are accessible to us from our group-minded show experiences. Maybe you've met one or two along they way. They're not messing around lol. Act proper around them! Have a clear intention to do nothing wrong. Be positively good! And you probably will either get past them or get some morsel of spiritual silver out of them :)
Well, we snuck in past the guard, each time. Bobby and I both had beautiful brown hooded cloaks on. And I had an old fashioned sleepy-hollow like lantern as our only form of light. It was pitch dark. We had to get past the guard into the room where Jerry was about to die and become all-astral, at any minute. Does this all seem far-fetched? The imagery is surely influenced by my mind's eye's delights. If I had to say anything about our attire, I'd say we had a Jedi-style cloak on. But... also rather monk-like. And the acolyte term - I had to go look up after the first time the guard said it to me. So it's not all about what I - as the shaman or journey-leader puts together as an entrance ritual. It's also what presents itself as the journey unfolds itself to make the connection with the spirit. We were entering the world of the astral lifeform. And we joined in that energy space with a spirit already there. So guided by him, my energy, Weir's of course too, my guides that so graciously allow me to lead people into that space, and etcetera etcetera lol. You never get very far in the spirit world without lots of astral beings taking note and getting their little notebooks out and keeping tabs on you! Using different diversions, I got us past the guard and into Jerry's room, where he was laying down on a bed.
The room appeared to us as really small. It was big enough for a twin size bed, that he was on, with a nightstand on the right side, up against the wall. My right, Jerry's left lol. That's all there was of the room on that side of the bed - night table, outer wall. The other side had a stool, that I directed Bobby to sit on. It was next to the bed, up close. That outer wall looked like it had a long shelf built into it. And that's all. Very plain. Very staid. Lots of white. End table a nice brown. That's about it for color. And Jerry was laying there and Bobby sat next to him. The first night, I stood by the end of the bed. Intense grief enveloped both of the men. Now - all three of us were entrained in this journey state. I have to have my eyes closed to very clearly lead this. I could see all of our energetic beings together. At that moment, we were all the same. Astral, once human or still human. And they talked for a couple minutes. Sadly, crying it out together. It was very intimate in how close they seemed. I had not felt either try to get that close since I'd been working with the two of them. And they cried, Jerry up and died, Bobby talked to me about how he was feeling. Jerry, and the experience started to fade, and we came out of it. Rather knocked-about feeling. It was a very sad first go at it. But sad was totally okay. Very healthy.
The next two tries at this, we started the same way. By the third night, it was jovial. By then, the main grief-volcano had blown and there was nervous but chit-chatty like talking the second time through it. I fascinated some to calm the nervous pair, and they accomplished a much easier form of the goodbye they needed so that they could work together without this giant elephant of emotions in the room taking their attention away from their new life together as spirit and guy-who-jams-with-spirit lol. That's Bobby's Native American name btw (I am jk :) The last night was not the last night by my design. We got in, we were all joking. Funny duo. They, frankly, say the stupidest things. Talk about music in ways I don't understand, and their jokes are so corny they crack me up. They didn't high-five lol but that was the tone of that night's re-enactment of Jerry's transformation into all-astral xo! And then it was over. I was provided via my spirit guide to conclude with that. And after that, Weir and Garcia could mingle together during shows, as spirit-Jerry really likes to do. Hang, influence, create together. It makes him happy. And Bobby was much happier not feeling like a scared sad dude doing it with Jerry, but a proud open-to-it explorer, as he struts around up there and works the crowd like a roaring leopard lol right?
So I'd love to stop right there, but with any big healing experience, there is the afterglow of worn out, dragged out, sad lingering, happy on it's way, hangover type thing going on. Don't go partying hard or anything during this phase, or you might break your mind. Again, it's hard to do, it needs time to process. You have to let the experience sink in and let your mind clear, and just sit there on basecamp while you acclimate to the newly-healed form of you. After a bit of "oh god I just want to go home and sleep" lol it all went very smoothly into power overdrive there, and me, Bobby, Jerry and Al kept playing together at home and at shows. It was a nice period in my life. This was somewhere around and about Y2K. We had a nice time bugging ourselves out, seeing what a madcap group of spirit explorers could accomplish together. It was fun!
These days, I'm living out in New York again, near Rochester. I still hang out with Jerry and Al. But we've left a lot of the rest of it out back in California. I tell the story so those who enjoy knowing about how Bobby and Jerry started hanging out again after Garcia entered the spirit world can hear a little more about it than maybe they already knew.
My own family life is very different now. I have a wonderful team - my kids Harley, Apache, and Brianna, have their flesh bodies still, and we hang out every day with my kids who are now in their astral forms: Reggie, Figs, Ally, Maggie, and Mousey. And we have a wonderful array of spirit guides. And two awesome full-time family members who join Garcia as our adopted family lol - Mary and Mart. It's an awesome lifestyle that we enjoy a lot. I'm always a deadhead but never on tour anymore. Always a shaman, but totally never working again. My leg became disabled after some very serious sciatic permanent nerve damage and I'm off the clock for good. It takes all my energy. But, to me, it's always been for my own edification anyway. I'm very happy to have had that experience with Bobby, Jerry, and myself and to have had the opportune spot in life to witness them work though grief to continue to soar furthur :) xo!
One more thing before I go, as we all know, Bobby's been a little off-his-path as of late. He's not very healthy looking these days :( and we all are pretty worried about him. We all know he's trying really hard to keep touring for all of us not to be left out of our own obsession-and-it's-pleasin' lifestyle. But we need to remember he's a regular guy first and an icon next after that. A little time off is not only okay, but the rest is part of the song, too! Let's hope he gets his healthy center back. He's teetering, and in our business lol that could mean another nasty fall. So love out to our friend; remember, he's family, too, so don't expect more from him than you would from any other tour friend. That's my two cents - a heads penny and a tails one to end us here, for now,
With Much Love Sandy, Jerry, Ally, Martin, and Mary, too XO!
Ps. Enjoy the typos and grammatical errors for now, as they are soon to be eradicated by an actual re-reading and editing of this essay lol :)
