Salsola kali
Trituration proving, by Dr. Roland Guenther.
Names: Tumbleweed, Kali tragus.
When I first came from Germany to Canada, I was as excited as if I was a little boy about all the new things that I discovered. Every plant, every bird was new and I remembered my time as a child and then as a teenager when exploring the world and nature around me seemed to be my life's purpose.
I had done family constellation work according to Bert Hellinger in Germany. Family constellations are done in order to heal trans-generational problems that had been passed down from generation to generation. When this work is being done in Germany, a very high percentage of these problems started in World War Two and in the Nazi times. When I did constellation work in Canada, I found a similarly high percentage of trans-generational problems in immigrants that had their origin in the loss of culture and home land of the ancestors. I kept pondering about it.
Then one day in late summer I was driving South on Highway 2 from Calgary towards Ft. McLeod. A strong wind gusted over the prairies and rolled a tumbleweed across the road. In an instant I knew, that I have to ask the tumbleweed about how to heal the loss of one's roots because it does so every year. Once the plant has bloomed and the seeds are ripe, its stem naturally breaks off above the ground. Then the strong prairie winds blow it over the land and while rolling, it distributes its seeds. Obviously it is quite competent with losing its roots. I was even much more excited when I learned that it is an immigrant itself. As much as it seems to be typical of the prairies and hardly a Western movie is lacking a scene in which the tumbleweed is blown across the streets of an old ghost town, it was actually introduced from Russia in the 1870ies.
In early June of 2007, two men and three women met in the foothills East of Calgary for the shameeah ceremony. Two in our group were Native people, both of them deeply immersed in their culture.
This is what we all found out.
On the physical level, one person had a strong irritation of the larynx that made him cough “as if from dust”. He often had to clear his throat.
More important were the changes in our thinking and in our perceptions.
“I feel detached and free but it is not a pleasant feeling, it is more like there is nothing to hold on to.”
There was a strong connection to the wind. “I feel wind blowing on my hand.” - “Dry wind is blowing across the land, it is hot and dry.” - “I surrender into the wind.”
Somebody else: “The only thing that matters is the wind in my hair, what matters is to move.”
Images of storms with thunder and lightning came up, storms rolling across the prairies.
Leaving was a topic. “I follow voices inviting me on a journey. Everything seems to beckon me. The raven is calling, the hummingbird wants me to come along. It feels like dreams, like promises. If I do not go, then I will take drugs that take me somewhere.” - “I feel as if something is calling me from far beyond the physical realm. I see myself in a world of my childhood, an in between world, not quite here.” - “I feel lonesome, like being blown into the wind. There is an empty and hollow feeling inside.”
The backside of leaving was being left: “Oh my God, they left me behind!”
Another expression of the restlessness might have been the images of gypsies and nomads that came up.
The further we moved into the process, the more pronounced was the detachment to the degree of not being able to connect anymore. “I am disconnected from something really important. I am scattered and almost forgot what I was doing here.“
Nothing seemed important. An unsettling feeling of loneliness pervaded us, with a restless desire to wander. Reality lost its contours. We felt suspended in time and space. This lead to confusion. We asked ourselves: What is reality, is it illusion, is it a dream? One participant felt totally clear and aware, however, he missed a whole round of triturating. He seemed to be lost. “I have images of travelers who got lost.” - “I am solving the problems of the universe but I cannot remember a thing. I felt removed from the group, like I was lost in space.”
It felt a little drug-like. “I see fairies riding on plants.”
Others started time travelling. “I slip into my childhood and watch grandma cook in a tent.” - “It feels as if I am in a space ship and could travel through time and space.”
“I am completely lost.”, was the culmination.
In C4 level, we were able to perceive a solution.
”Thunder gives me some kind of ground, of connection. Thunder found me. He gives me direction. It is not my own direction anymore. He tells me that I had to get lost to the world in order to be found from Spirit. I had to lose my bearings in this reality in order to be able to move into a different reality. You had to lose your connections in order to find that you are connected on a higher level.”
“I can see a bigger connection now. I can see each one of us as energy touching each other and at the same time reaching with energetic arms out to touch everything else in the universe. I am awe struck. It is an image of utmost beauty, of perfection and magnitude. It is majestic like when you face a mountain, only that here it is about the space the mountain top just touches, it is about the space above the mountain. It is light moving in darkness and it is only the darkness that makes the light visible.”
I started out looking for a solution for the immigration phenomenon of losing one's cultural roots. I had hoped for some kind of healing, that we would grow roots again in another land. This was not what the tumbleweed had to tell us. The solution of the tumbleweed was different, instead it told us: Do not complain your loss but celebrate it.
What a lesson for us in accepting what life challenges us with! What we might perceive as a loss, in the energy of the tumbleweed is actually a blessing, an opportunity that would simply not exist without the loss.