Hooked in the Heart

On finally finding the elusive key to turning on the inner electricity. Opening a Jar of Honey, Essay Three.

This is the third essay in my series, Opening a Jar of Honey: Celebrating 10 Years of Sacred Ecstatics.

In the second installment, “How I Became an Ecstatic Shaker: Part Spiritual Testimony, Part Love Story,” I described the first time I met Brad and my initial encounters with something mysterious I’d never heard of called n/om.* Below I pick up where that story left off: the surprise of being thrown into a new spiritual role, my early struggles to re-awaken the inner current, the feeling that something was missing, and a very brief treatise on hippos and the two kinds of spiritual hunger.

*N/om is a Kalahari Ju/’hoan Bushman word for the universal life force, the power behind creation and transformation. In the body it can feel like fire, vibration, electricity, and heightened love all at once. N/om, like the Holy Spirit, seiki, qi, or kundalini, can be transmitted from person to person through touch or sound.

About one week after I moved in with Brad in 2010, we flew to Brazil for a “shaking medicine” gathering.¹ While everyone danced and shook to the music, I spent most of the time off to the side of the room working on my dissertation. Pretty hilarious, in retrospect. But it was the first shaking event I attended after receiving n/om from Brad one year prior, and I still felt shy about jumping in. The Brazilians were so warm and sincere, however, that by the end of the week I had softened a bit and started participating—but only a little and mostly while seated. Brad, who joyfully regards most things as a mystical-theatrical laboratory experiment, watched with curiosity as I went through my “process,” encouraging me to participate as much or as little as I wanted.

Brad and I all aglow in Brazil fourteen years ago

So what stopped me from letting go and shaking with the group? Mainly I was hung up on the idea that I first had to feel something before I could move. It turns out I was partly right, but I’ll come back to that later.

After several months and a few more shaking medicine events had passed, I still felt stuck—like a sputtering engine that wouldn’t quite turn over. I asked Brad one night, “How do you wake up the n/om inside you so easily? How do you feel it?”

After a brief pause, he said, “I have an inner switch—like a light switch. I just flip it on.”

I was not satisfied with this answer. “How do I get an inner switch? I must not have one.”

“You have one,” he said.

“Then how do I flip it on?” I asked, trying to hide my frustration.

I remember wanting the kind of concrete, unambiguous answer that I also knew would not help even if I heard it. Although a lot can be said about receiving n/om and reawakening it afterward, there’s no magic formula or simple protocol that provides instant, consistent “results” (I cringe even writing that word in this context). Spiritual teachers are thus faced with the challenge of imparting practical, useable wisdom while at the same time disrupting students’ impatience and desire for an easy reduction.

I don’t recall exactly how Brad responded that night, but I’m sure he found a skillful way to lead us back from the shallow waters of oversimplification I was steering us into.

The truth is, back then I did know that I had an inner switch, but I didn’t yet know how to use it. When I first received n/om from Brad I had experienced a current of spiritual electricity move through my body that made me spontaneously tremble and shake. This created a new palpable reference point and compass setting for my life. I now had something within that was outside my conscious control—a spark, a tiny flame, a latent emotion. The Bushman healers would say that Brad had installed “nails” of n/om inside me that were asleep, and I needed to learn how to wake them up.²

I also felt a new sense of urgency about it all. I never had any interest in becoming a healer or spiritual teacher, but to a certain degree I now found myself in those roles by virtue of partnering with Brad. I quickly went from observing at the side of the room in Brazil to being on stage with him leading groups and conducting healing sessions around the world. But I didn’t want to just fall back on my former professional skills. I wanted my actions to be n/om-led, fire-fed, and electrically charged. This required throwing away almost all of my prior learning and starting from scratch.

To put things in perspective, Brad had been a healer and n/om-shaker for over thirty years by the time I joined him in front of audiences at conferences, spiritual retreats, and in family therapy clinics. He had also been profoundly touched by holiness as a young man and many times thereafter.³ I certainly didn’t think that suddenly I would possess all the spiritual gifts it took Brad decades to grow into. I also knew that not everyone who receives n/om is destined to be a healer or spiritual teacher. Yet the surprising fact remained I was now working shoulder to shoulder with a seasoned spiritual electrician. Ready or not, it was time to drop the interference and plug in. Wake up, nails, wake up! I had a lot to learn and was hungry to grow.

Two Kinds of Hunger

Since then, I’ve learned there are two kinds of spiritual hunger. The difference between them has everything to do with whether and how we receive and grow any spiritual gift or step into the roles we’ve been called to fulfill.

First, there’s the good hunger: the desire for n/om, to feel the holy current. If that desire is sincere it will be accompanied by a sense of urgency to abandon the small cubicle of self for life in the Big Room of mystery. The Sufis call this the first level of himma, the inspiration and motivation to seek God rather than worldly rubble.⁴

Himma hunger, let’s call it, is a longing in the heart for divine union and communion. It’s essential fuel for sustaining the effort and patience required of a spiritual life. Paradoxically, we want himma hunger to grow and never be fully satiated. As an elder Black church man once joyfully told Brad, “I just can’t get enough of God.” Himma hunger makes us softer, more flammable, and more conductive.

But himma hunger easily gets confused with another kind of desire, one that shows up the moment our feet hit the spiritual trail: hippo hunger. Hippo, or more formally, Lord Hippo, is Sacred Ecstatics’ affectionate name for the self or ego. Hippo will pursue any means of self-affirmation or aggrandizement, and that includes spirituality. As such, Lord Hippo is particularly enticed by the idea of having magical powers, gaining a special hookup to the spirit world, or quickly stepping into a teaching or healing role so it can be seen and admired.

Hippo thinks it feels true himma hunger for spirituality and mysticism, but really it’s only hungry to experience itself as spiritual and mystical, at least according to its fantasy of what that would be like. Hippo constantly checks the mirror to gauge its progress.

The difference between these two hungers can be extremely difficult to discern in oneself and others because Hippo knows all the right thoughts to think and words to say. But Lord Hippo eventually shows its cards. When it doesn’t get fed it tends to pout or lash out, get angry, jealous, apathetic, or simply loses interest in the spiritual path. But feeding Hippo what it wants in an effort to appease it only makes it hungrier. A vicious cycle ensues.

It’s pragmatically wise to assume we’re never entirely free of hippo hunger. Vigilance is required! So is help from experienced hippo tamers. And yet it’s best to handle it with a healthy dose of absurdity because Lord Hippo loves to take itself too seriously. With a bit of humor, a lot of grace, and sufficient existential crisis, our desire for holy bread will eventually become greater than our appetite for hippo treats.

There you have it, the two hungers: himma hunger and hippo hunger. You can probably already guess which one helps turn the inner light switch on.

Finding What Was Missing

I was fortunate that by the time I partnered with Brad, several years of Zen training had already taught me to be wary of Hippo’s wily ways. After constantly catching myself—and being caught by others—patting myself on the back or subtly strutting my mindful stuff it got boring and predictable, the habit easier to interrupt. This of course freed my Hippo to focus on other means of sabotage including distraction, indolence, and so on.

The point is, when I later joined Brad on stage I wasn’t tripped up by self-inflated fantasies of showing off my new shamanic powers. (Also, what powers?) Instead, I was brought to my knees at discovering just how inept the conscious self is when it comes to activating the spiritual current. Even my most astute observations (ha), clearest thoughts (ha ha), and highest intentions (hilarious!) proved to be almost entirely irrelevant. As irrelevant as they were to practicing Zen, actually.

So what is relevant to flipping on the inner switch? What I’ve discovered since I initially asked Brad this question can be traced back to that first shaking medicine event in Brazil. I didn’t realize it at the time but I had stumbled right into an ancient ecstatic koan: Which comes first, the feeling or the shake?

It’s the feeling, right? At least that’s what I assumed. Otherwise I would just be shaking for fun, not fire, and it was fire that I sought. I didn’t want to shake on purpose, I wanted to be shaken. So I watched and waited, then I moved a little, but the feeling never came and the fire didn’t light.

Looking back, that’s not surprising. While there are probably a million ways to get out of the selfie head and into the ecstatic groove, sitting still and quietly monitoring whether we “feel something” isn’t one of them. That kind of mindfulness is a real electricity dampener. If I could go back in time to Brazil and whisper some advice into my ear, I would say this: Get over yourself and get amongst it.

In other words: drop the idea that anything is supposed to happen, listen to the music, and move. Shake and the feeling will follow. And if it doesn’t, whatever. Taking part chips away at the ego far more than remaining apart. Whether the situation calls for shaking, dancing, singing, clapping, chanting, praying, or shouting “Amen,” act to be in sync with what’s going on in the room rather than sink further into the observing self. Act or remain hostage to Hippo’s swinging moods.

The late Bushman healer, Cgunta Elae, amplified this message when he once told Brad:

God sleeps in our hearts when we are not dancing. When we dance, he wakes up. When we get angry, or jealous, or irritated with someone, all we can do is wake up God. God then chases the trouble away. To wake him up, we must dance.

Ten-four, Captain. Stop stewing, start moving.

But now comes the tricky part, the other side of the ecstatic koan: Everyone can dance or shake, but not everyone has God sleeping in their heart. I didn’t, not in the beginning. Not sufficiently, at least. To clarify, when Cgunta says he dances to wake up God, he means he dances to wake up his feeling for God, the Big Love he feels for the Sky God. If this sacred emotion isn’t sleeping in our heart, then all the shaking and dancing in the world can’t wake up its medicine. We’re not born with this feeling-for-God inside us, but we are built for it. We’re built to catch it and be caught by it, to carry it, grow it, and wake it up when needed.

So which comes first, the feeling or the shake? It doesn’t really matter, but both have to be present for the fire to light, the switch to flip, the n/om to awaken. And of the two, the feeling is the most essential. An old southern preacher may have said it best: “Before God can use a man, that man must be hooked in the heart.”⁵

Meaning before God can:

shake us
dance us
heal us
shake through us
dance through us
heal through us
sing through us
play through us
write through us
art through us
cook through us
or use us for anything,
we must be hooked in the heart.

Every longtime, recent time, soon time, and future time ecstatic is himma-hungering for that hook.

Now technically speaking, when Brad first gave me n/om he also instilled in me this feeling-for-God because by definition every n/om nail carries electrified sacred emotion compressed inside it. But I guess I didn’t receive enough, or he had given me a slow-release n/om tablet, or I was thinking too much, or who knows?

Eventually, the feeling and the shaking came together in me, like a circuit. If I activate one it automatically flips on the other.

This makes perfect sense in the body but can be very confounding to the mind

When sacred emotion and ecstatic expression amplify each other in seamless circulation, it generates a fire-electricity-holy wind-current-life force-vibration that goes by many names around the world, one of which is n/om. Once you feel it, you’ll want more of it. Nothing heals, renews, inspires, satisfies, quenches, or tastes quite right without n/om.

I now see how important it was for me all those years ago in Brazil to get stuck and sense that something was lacking. If I could go back in time once more, I’d let myself shake-on-purpose for a while and then I’d whisper again in my ear: You’re right, something is missing. And it’s the most important thing. The only question is, how hungry are you to find it?

Don’t forget, there are two hungers. Be wary of Hippo rushing in to hijack or dull the gift of holy hunger pangs. Don’t explain them away or fake the shake out of a desire to prove that you’re already complete and don’t need anything, especially something a little embarrassing like religious emotion. Instead, feel real himma hunger to be hooked in the heart.

In the meantime, don’t let Lord Hippo keep you still. Get over yourself and get amongst it. Go ahead and shake, but shake hungry. Dance hungry, sing hungry, pray hungry. The more himma hunger we feel, the more easily we surrender to being moved, shaken, caught, pierced, hooked, and cooked. The hungrier we are for God’s fire and electricity, the more spiritually satisfied we become.

-Hillary Keeney

P.S. If you enjoyed this essay, please hit the heart button and share it with someone else who is hungry for n/om.

Dedication

This essay is dedicated to our dear friend, Walther Hermann, who co-hosted our shaking medicine events in Brazil for many years. Walther is currently facing the last months of his life with spirit, wisdom, and grace. We are grateful for the many times that together we shared the electrical current of God’s shaking love—a love that lasts forever!

I also dedicate this essay to Alice Kiyomi Tachibana, a member of the Brazilian shaking group who recently passed away. When I think of the ebullient joy, warmth, and sincerity I experienced there, it’s her smiling face I see.

That’s Alice on the left.

(Cover image is Wassily Kandinsky, doctored with Bushman rock art images)

1. At that time Brad called his work “shaking medicine” based on his 2007 book, Shaking Medicine: The Healing Power of Ecstatic Movement.

2. The Bushmen healers describe n/om as a thorn, nail, or arrow – metaphors for things that pierce. Once received, n/om nails are said to sleep inside the belly, lying sideways. Through strong singing and dancing the nails can wake up and travel vertically up to the heart and out through the vocal cords through songs or other sounds. This is one way n/om is circulated in a healing dance. You can read more about n/om in our book, Way of the Bushman.

3. See Brad’s autobiographical books, Bushman Shaman: Awakening the Spirit through Ecstatic Dance and Shaking Out the Spirits. There is also a biography of Brad called American Shaman, written by Jeffrey Kottler and John Carlson.

4. “Worldly rubble” is one of our favorite phrases from Ibn ‘Arabi’s Journey to the Lord of Power, translated by Rabia Terri Harris. It refers to earthly materiality, including the notion of a material self separate from God. Himma is defined as spiritual inspiration and motivation, but inside the heart of a mystic it grows to become something closer to n/om. Inspired by Ibn ‘Arabi, the Islamic scholar, Henry Corbin, called himma “a creative power of the heart.” For a discussion of the different levels of himma, see Lala, Ismail. 2023. Turning Religious Experience into Reality: The Spiritual Power of Himma. Religions 14: 385.

5. Johnson, Clifton H. 1969. God Struck Me Dead: Religious Conversion Experiences and Autobiographies of Ex-Slaves. Philadelphia: Pilgrim Press, 19. Note: I always waffle about whether to edit this quote to be gender inclusive, but I like the rhythm of the sentence much better with “man” so I usually just leave it.