Lynn V. Andrews writings reflect the juxtaposition of our urban lives with the magical existence expressed by the wisdom of her native American teachers. After some eighteen books and countless seminars, Andrews is currently recognized as a leading voice in personal development. Following the practice of her teachers, she tells stories and relates experiences -- that at first may seem unrelated. But when the fragments and pieces are brought together, they form a coherent whole. Andrews writes, "There is magic in this world if you want the world to be magical. If you want life to be special, it will be. No one wants to be bored or consumed by ordinary drudgery. But what happens, all too often, is that when magic is presented to us, we don't believe it, because we don't trust ourselves. We don't realize what can really be accomplished. We don't realize that if we wish to, we can take other forms. We can sit in the presence of the great masters, angels, or ancient seers of wisdom and find peace and wisdom, but it takes many small deaths, the giving away of old limitations, to get there." The following is edited from her Bodhi Tree presentation in November, 2001.

I want to say a prayer before I begin. It's from my book Walk in Spirit and it is a prayer for peace.

"Oh, Great Spirit, the sacred blanket of life keeps me warm when I am cold. In these days of transition, I take the sacred blankets that you have given us, and I remember how you taught us to pray. I take the black threads of the West and I tie them with the golden threads of the East. As I offer a prayer for illumination of my spirit, I ask, as I tie the knot for harmony between East and West, for the veils of ignorance to be torn away forever between all people. I remember, Great Spirit, sacred mystery, when you guided my fingers to the white threads of the North, the threads of spirit and wisdom, you showed me how to tie them with the red fibers of the South, the threads of substance. I pray over the sacred ties of this great blanket, and I ask for peace for the innocent and trusting child that is my soul. I wrap my humble body with your proud blanket of peace and harmony forever." Ho.

There is a tree of dreams within all of us. We have branches searching for the light. We have leaves, dreams that grow old. When they lose form and drop to the earth, we have new growth, new branches, searching for space and nurturing. We are a tree filled with a life force of dreams and the violence of broken dreams. What is the meaning of our lives, and how do we live through this time of transition and tragedy? Ultimately, all we have is our own experience of life.

I want to share with you how I see the tree of dreams being born, taking form and growing. This is a hero's journey, as I experienced it. In a way we are so very unprepared for the second half of life and what happens there. Where is my passion, where is the magic in my life? In the first part of our life we're so busy surviving that we don't realize what we're doing. Towards our forties we begin realizing that we have walked out of the ordinary world, and heard a call to adventure, which is really the hero's journey. We've moved into a special, unusual world, oftentimes filled with magic even if we don't acknowledge it. As for me, I resisted the call. I saw my native American teachers, Agnes and Ruby, and I was transfixed by their beauty and their incredible wisdom. But I was afraid because I realized that to become an apprentice with them, I was going to have to change my life forever. I was scared. All of us are scared when shocking things happen. Look at September 11th. It was a huge wakeup call for becoming more aware of our spiritual growth.

"We need to tear away the illusions of conditioning that we all have from childhood, from all different aspects of our life, and to create a circle of truth that is our own." -- Lynn V. Andrews

You have to know about energy before you can deal with shamanism or higher consciousness. We need to tear away the illusions of conditioning that we all have from childhood, from all different aspects of our life, and to create a circle of truth that is our own. People don't have a chance to be who they really are or to answer a calling because they are often living what their parents, wives or husbands wanted, or what they think they should be doing in a society.

All of these things are part of the hero's journey, and that journey has a lot to do with meeting a mentor. In Tree of Dreams I talk about what it meant to have someone who had walked on the trail before me; someone who knew some of the pitfalls, agonies and joys I would go through and help me to understand them. I met tests, allies, enemies, and everything in between. The tests were enormous, and sometimes I thought I would die. Oftentimes the tests are from the people that you love the most, who were once your absolute best friends. And there are enemies, of course.

When I went to Nepal to see Ani, a Nepalese hill woman healer, who is part of the Sisterhood, I convinced her to take me to see another healer I'd heard about. After we were ushered in, this woman looked at me and screamed, "uh-huh-huh-huh." And she cried, "There's a sorcerer trying to kill you, and I can save you." Of course, I believed her. I was scared to death. But Ani literally took me by the scruff of the neck and dragged me away. The next morning, I was still exhausted and terrified, but Ani just glowered at me. "A sorcerer will never kill you," she said. "They make you kill yourself out of terror." If you feel frightened these days, remember one thing: fear is contagious. But anthrax is not.

Recently, I went to my teacher and said, "Hey, I need to know what's going on here." They said, "Imagine that there is a great God, and imagine that this God conceived all of us human beings, our beautiful life, all of the life force in the universe. And so he went to sleep, this great God, and he started dreaming, and he dreamed us all into being." But, she said, "This has been millions and millions of years because we see it as the relative world. We judge it as the relative world. But for this God, it is simply a dream. And he does love us more than anything, and he loves the vision of us. But there was always a force in the universe who didn't want this to occur, and because of that, this dreamer is in danger. If he stays asleep, he will lose his beings, so he has to wake up and he is beginning to." This is what they're telling me. I'm sitting there, listening. And they said, "Lynn, this dreamer is yawning. He is turning over. He is beginning to awaken." "So," I said, "what does that mean for us? What does that mean?" "Well," she said, "we've talked a lot about the hourglass and the sand going through the neck of the hourglass." At the harmonic convergence a few years ago, everything came together and life started speeding up more than ever. Now, it's as if the sand is going out the bottom of the hourglass. We are going to move into a time when we have to hold the form of our own dream. That's what this is about. That's why you're feeling weird. There's a lot of stuff going on in the world that's very strange for us.

AUDIENCE QUESTION: What does "holding the form of your dream" mean?

ANDREWS: Holding the form of our own dream means that we are in an illusion, and that illusion is the great dreamer dreaming us. That's why we hang on. We're hanging on right now and you need to let go, because there are a lot of changes coming and we're going to grow. We need to grow whether we want to or not. But you need to meditate on this and think about it, if you will.

AUDIENCE QUESTION: What would you say to somebody - like me -- who finds it hard to have the courage to be herself in everyday life?

ANDREWS: I know the feeling. I think that the frailties we have are gifts. First of all, being frightened is of the mind, but you think it's real. And then you feel guilty about feeling that it's real and on and on. But if you can move your consciousness into your heart, you can be filled with joy and love.

AUDIENCE QUESTION: Can you discuss innocence and vulnerability?

ANDREWS: Your vulnerability is your best shield. People say to me so often, "How can I shield against all this evil in the world?" Wait a minute, wait a minute. Your shielding not only keeps something from coming in, but it prevents something from going out. So shielding is not part of innocence. Innocence is when somebody pushes against you and they push right through you because there's no ego mind in the way. You're in your heart. If you're in your heart, somebody that wants to hurt you can't find you because you're filled with love. You love them with complete compassion. My teachers have often told me that if I didn't have innocence, they could never have taught me. And I think innocence is something that you maintain no matter what you go through.

AUDIENCE QUESTION: Could you talk about that first act of power you performed in writing Medicine Woman? What was your inner process?

ANDREWS: You mean how I finally managed to get enough discipline to write? I didn't have much choice. Ruby and Agnes had asked me to come to be with them in the north of Canada, and I went up thinking that I was going to be there for a couple of years. I remember arriving in the middle of the night. Agnes was sitting out by her cabin in front of the fire, which was very unusual for her. She looked at me as I came running down the hill, and said, "What are you doing here?" I said, "Oh, Agnes, you asked me to come, I'm so thrilled, I'm here." And she said, "You're here. You don't belong here. You're not Indian." I set my bags down and said, "What are you talking about? You invited me to come here for two years, and I rented out my house. Iron-clad lease, and my daughter's at school and blah, blah, blah, blah." "No," she said, "You do not belong here. You're not Indian. You go away and let the eagles fly." And she held up her fingers and she said, "You go and you write about this ancient and sacred way of knowledge and our work together, and when you are finished, you bring it back to us and we will not dream you or see you until it's finished."

Well, I had a fit as only I can have a fit. But I got in my car and drove back. I ended up renting a little sharecropper cabin on the other side of the mountains in Santa Barbara. It was in a beautiful oak forest and there was a river nearby. Actually, there were a lot of wonderful things about that time. But I still went through my shaman death. I very nearly lost it. My life totally shifted. I had to write a book about my life with them. Fortunately, I always take notes and I had all these bits of bark and pieces of clothes that I had written on. I had to organize it into a beginning, middle and end, but I had done a lot of beginnings and not a lot of ends. I was furious at what they had done to me, but I knew I'd never see my teachers again if I didn't write the book. They knew that I was a dilettante and that I was never going to write a complete book unless I was challenged down to my bones. But I wrote to show you that even I could get through all of this, and that you can follow your dreams just like I did. You don't have to go through all of my drama. You can just read my books. But anyway, I think you have to find what is important to you, whatever it is, and do it. I know how hard it is. It's unbelievable. It's like life and death. I thought I was going to die writing Medicine Woman. Really. Just die. But they wouldn't let me.