RITUALISTIC IMMERSION IN RUNNING WATER (A STREAM OR river) or the ocean is one of the oldest forms of initiation and symbolic death and rebirth. It is one of the essential steps in awakening, frightening but necessary. We need to symbolically “die” to the old to be “born again” – our second birth. Furthermore, this second birth may be referred to as a “virgin birth.” As we can see, it is not membership in an earthly or religious institution. It is the beginning of an awakening to the truth of the world and one’s authentic self.
Few in the world still practice and teach this form of purification. Even in Jesus’s time, baptism in the River Jordan was a “unique event that even Catholic editors of the Jerusalem Bible consider to be an initiation.” Outside of the Mandeans of the Middle East, the greatest concentration of “dawn bathers” is to be found within the indigenous communities that still practice and adhere to the old ways. But even here, there are few still alive that can “initiate” and put people into the “living waters” of the Earth.
We are blessed to be two of those who still practice and “initiate” people into bathing. This “initiation” is not one of membership, but one of death and rebirth. After I put a person into the stream, he or she is free to revisit any stream and repeat the ritualistic immersion. Going bathing will help a person release the stress and hurt that comes from living in today’s chaotic and fearfilled world. And quite possibly, it may help prevent Alzheimer’s Disease.
After the “initiation,” there are multiple reasons for a person to revisit a stream and bathe. Bathings will increase a person’s spiritual power, medicine power, and his or her inner vitality. The living waters will also help release anger, guilt, resentment, fear, and uncertainty, as well as the other emotional baggage that we seem to carry and refuse to release.
Vince once told us that anger, along with fear, is our greatest enemy: “If you keep hurt feelings, or get mad at the weather, you get a heavy feeling, and it ties down your spiritual work. Anger breaks up the home and can ruin your life. It ruins hope and can separate families. Father goes one way, the mother goes the other way, and the children are left in the middle! Family love is very important, as well as the love in your heart. When you get like this (holding anger/hurt feelings), go up to the mountain to a stream and leave the anger, leave the hurt feelings, up there!”
In Ancient Peru, “after confession of guilt, an Inca bathed in a neighboring river and repeated this formula, ‘O thou River, receive the sins I have this day confessed unto the Sun, carry them down to the sea, and let them never more appear.’” As we can see, bathing has been used since ancient times for the passions of the mind. It then makes sense that Sher and I use bathing as one part of our releasing and healing process for deep emotional and physical trauma.