Follow the Ever-Peal!

Listening for the Call of the Ringing Bells, and Other Advice from the Forest Shamans

Many years ago, Brad was living with the Guarani shamans in the Amazon. They brought him inside their ceremonies and told him their life stories. Out of their time together came the book, Guarani Shamans of the Forest, published in 2000. Ava Tape Miri, or Little Seagull Man, also gave Brad this piece of personal advice, from one shaman to another:

Always follow the spirits of the forest and they will guide and protect you. If you follow your own reason, you will be lost.

Brad says these words went through him like a lightning bolt. Afterward, they haunted him like a stern but benevolent ghost. He also found this advice to be true. When he lived by the pull of his rope to God, the way forward opened. But when he followed his own reasoning, things inevitably went awry. Sometimes startlingly so.

Little Seagull Man’s advice seems easy enough to understand, but enacting it is far more difficult. It often requires going against conventional wisdom and even turning down lucrative opportunities. I think many of us fantasize that “following the spirits” means our deepest desires will be fulfilled, our struggles diminished. I’ll be bold and say this truism is the number one most insidious goo oozing from popular spiritual discourse. Sometimes our desires are fulfilled, but I’m wary of the simplistic notion that getting what we want is a sign we’re on a higher spiritual path.

Brad has taught me that following the spirits sometimes means making the more difficult or less glamorous choice. When I look at Brad’s life and the lives of the other shamans he knew, I see a lot of miracles and extraordinary grace, but also plenty of heartbreak and injustice.

Brad with Ava Tape Miri

Whenever we’re faced with a big decision I still half-jokingly (only half!) ask Brad, “Can’t you just dream more specific guidance like a phone number or the map of a country like you used to?” He always laughs, “That’s not how it works.” And of course I know that. But unmistakable, earth-shaking prophecy and heavy-handed providence sound like a tantalizing relief from agonizing over lists of pros and cons to the point of absurdity. Brad cautions me, with a smile: “Be careful what you ask for.” I’m possibly too careful. As someone who has faced my share of destiny-changing life explosions, both good and bad, I’m not lacking in cosmic piety.¹

It doesn’t help that in many cases “the spirits” seem to grant us a wide berth with significant grey area and wiggle room, just enough to drive us crazy wrestling with our inner spin doctor who can make almost anything seem like a wise or dumb choice, depending on this-that-or-whatever.

Me trying to “follow the spirits”

Brad also reminds me that sometimes the things we regard as very high stakes life decisions are just not that important to the Great Mystery in the scheme of things. It seems divine messengers and hurling thunderbolts are saved for more pressing matters which are discerned through a higher logic we are not privy to. And even when our prayers are answered, it sure can be hard to tell.

An Ojibwe medicine man and friend helped Brad learn this perplexing lesson decades ago when he found himself at a crossroads. Following the spirits in that case meant Brad had to surrender the reins and accept a deeply bitter, heart-wrenching outcome. The Creator was no doubt listening on the prayer line but had a different plan in mind. Being a Holy Man is not all soaring eagles and rainbows, apparently.

Still, here’s what the shamans of the forest, the plains, the deserts, the mountains, and the one I know from Smithville, Missouri all say: “The life of a shaman is the life of prayer.”² There's no getting around it. No hope of discerning holy signal from trickster noise unless we keep cleaning the pipeline with prayer.

One night last year, we both went to sleep praying to receive guidance for our life with Sacred Ecstatics. But this time as Brad prayed, a voice inside him told him not to use words. “Pray as you used to years ago—with music.” He switched to hearing his inner piano, fell asleep, and had a dream:

I saw Hillary walking with a small boy along the streets of an old city in the dark of night. They were lost and weren’t sure which street or direction to take. An older man was ahead of them, checking to see what lay beyond the street on which they were traveling. He seemed lost as well. Hillary shouted out, “What direction should we go?” The elder in the distance may have responded, but it couldn’t be heard. Then she and the boy heard a voice from on high guide them: “Follow the ever-peal.” Upon hearing the word “peal,” they also heard it echo back in changing forms as “zeal” and also “field.” Perhaps it was “evergreen,” I thought in the dream.

The next morning, we looked up the word “peal” and found it means a loud or reverberating sound of thunder, laughter, or bells. It originally referred to the bells summoning people to a church meeting.

In “campanology,” the official word for bell ringing, it has a more specific meaning. An official peal requires a sequence of at least five thousand changes on more than seven bells. A typical peal takes three hours to ring. The tones, time intervals, order, and rhythms are memorized and must be perfectly timed. Standing in a circle facing one another, a peal takes great concentration on the part of the bell ringers to make it come together in the right way.

So, what direction should we go? This vision didn’t bring us an address, a map, a phone number, or a name. But it did deliver a brightly ringing truth that reverberates through my soul, even if it does not satisfy my literal mind. “Follow the ever-peal!” I’ve been haunted by these words ever since.

Wandering in the dark, our big me (conscious mind) may try to venture far out on a limb to scout unknown territory, thinking it knows best how to find the way. Just keep walking next to the little me child who can still hear the call of the wild.

Follow the ever-peal! The sound of holy bells, the signal in the air, the music born of sacred concentration.

Follow the ever-zeal! The big joy, the heart leap, the great excitation.

Follow the ever-field! The evergreen pasture, the warm earth, the sacred ground.

Somewhere a bell is ringing. Somewhere the spirits of the forest are singing. Follow the ever-peal, it will lead us to the utmost zeal found in the evergreen field of the Big Holy.

-Hillary

P.S. We’re so excited because our 2022-2023 Guild season begins tomorrow! We’ll share some news from inside the rabbit hole in October.

P.P. S. Here I am ringing a Japanese bell in Albuquerque, New Mexico last summer, in honor of this dream.

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1. I adapted this phrase from Bertrand Russell. In his seminal 1945 book, The History of Western Philosophy, he wrote that “cosmic impiety” represented one of the greatest dangers of our time.

2. Words from Tupa Nevangayu in Guarani Shamans of the Forest (2000).