Twenty-six days ago, on July 21, I discovered a doughnut-shaped bruise on the back of my thigh.

It was oddly painless, and I have no idea how I might have done that to myself.

I found myself telling Greg it reminded me of an audio electrical plug, with one electrical pole, positive or negative, in the center and the opposite pole on the circle.

Tonight, I found an essentially identical bruise on my arm – again, with no idea how it was done, and again, oddly painless.

The only difference is that the hole in the middle is bigger.

This has been an amazing few weeks.  Thinking I was dying, deciding I had to claim who I am – a shamanic practitioner, a mind control subject, an experiencer of things “alien,” etc.

To accept who I am, I wrote my spiritual history and discovered that as I write my history and integrate it, even slowly, across my business, activist, spiritual websites, and into my social life, I feel more integrated, more clear, less fractured.

And then this happens.

(In the past, I would have fumed that my controllers are still “doing stuff” to me, trying to undercut my confidence, or worse, send me a message of warning to not try to accomplish anything, and I’d go into depression, helpless and despairing.  And then I’d pray and feel guilty for being so undisciplined as to not keep myself continually protected.)

For some reason, I didn’t freak out this time.  I even forgot about the bruise immediately after seeing it, forgetting to photograph it as I’d intended, and walked out the door to break my hermitting habit of the last few weeks and go socialize for an hour or two at the restaurant where Greg was performing.

After I’d greeted everyone I knew and sat down, something made me notice the bruise again – and for the first time in 12 years – I showed everyone at the table and told them what I assumed it was.  Even a friend who has read my book wanted to believe it was a freak accident.  I had to remind her I have ten years of photographic documentation of bruises of various types, two Taser burns, many biopsy scoop marks, healed incisions, puncture wounds, etc, which occur mysteriously during the night, for which I have no memory of anything.  And this corresponds to experiences of others with another two strange correlations:  seeing UFO’s and/or “aliens” and experiencing mysterious government intrusions into their lives.

Yeah, I told them, face-to-face.  Not in a book.  Not in a presentation on stage, radio, or TV, but as a friend in a bar, saying, “This is what I live with.  This is what I’ve been keeping secret.  And it sure feels good to say it – even though I know you’d rather not hear it.”

And I thought:  And this is why I’m so f**king neurotic and don’t act like everyone else!  I’m sorry.  But this is my world.  I wish I could confirm for everyone that our world is the simple one we all try to pretend it is.  But it’s really more complicated.  There’s a lot more going on.  And it’s time we talk about it.

That was probably inspired by the video I blogged on a few weeks back, “How to Spot a Liar,” the most revolutionary video I’ve seen in a long time, which has been part of my big shift over the last few weeks.

Pamela Meyer begins her Ted Talk by encouraging us to recognize that we are all liars, and have been trained to be liars since birth.  I didn’t believe her at first, but she quickly helped me see that we do all lie, much of the time, and many of the lies are for efficiency and are acceptable, but some lies create habits that allow our world systems, economic, social, environmental, and all others, to deteriorate.  She calls on us to stop collaborating.

Immediately I saw that I lied constantly when I pretend I have a life like everyone else’s.  And I realized that I needed to present myself more honestly, politely and appropriately, but more honestly, even if people don’t like it.

I’m sorry, I hear myself saying.  We live in a world that has gotten us used to accepting a lot of lies.  And we want to believe those lies, because they’re part of our paradigm, our mental framework; losing our mental framework is damnably difficult and people avoid it at all costs, even if it’s necessary, the same way we’d recoil at re-breaking an arm if it had healed wrong.

We need to get over those lies and start acknowledging what is the truth.

This is my truth:  I get strange bruises and other marks that don’t seem to be accidental or natural, and no one – no doctor or other with “legitimacy” – has any explanation that makes sense.

My explanation I’ll write about soon, and parts of it I’ll  also acknowledge in conversation when appropriate.

And this supports the really important thing:

It’s time for me to accept my call to – this responsibility we today call shamanic practice.

I have responsibilities I can feel, to pray, meditate, dream, journey, and heal.  And I haven’t been making the time or space in my life for this, for years, though it continues to call.  And now we are making changes in our home to support my work.

With this decision, I feel strong, that I’ve re-entered my path which I’ve been avoiding for a very long time, and that avoidance has been making me crazy.

(Black Elk said his elders told him his demons would continue to torment him until he accepted his calling!  They were bothering him for a good purpose.  In the event my demons are bothering me for the same positive purpose, I pray my new dedication to this work will make them go away.)

So today, when I found this bruise, I just saw it as another clue in a tantalizing mystery, which I’m keenly interested in solving.  It could be a horror-story answer, or it could be something surprisingly wonderful –

like the “Dragonfly Birth Day” taught me:  Something might look monstrous, but it may turn out beautiful, so we shouldn’t jump to conclusions.

Maybe this bruise is a mark left from a procedure my soul family had to do, and it’s too hard to explain to me, given my Earthly and our other limitations, and there’s lots going on that doesn’t allow everything to be explained.  Or maybe it’s just like all the rest of life – no one explains anything very well to any of us anytime – right?

So, life’s a mystery.  And we’re all doing our best.

Meantime, it’s not a good investment of life energy to get freaked out if we don’t know if a thing is good or bad.   And even if it’s bad, it’s still not a good investment of life energy to get freaked out.

In the last few weeks, I’ve had at least one other event that made me want to freak out, and the last time I started to, I remembered that I’ve also been experiencing a lot of powerfully amazing things, especially lately, helping me feel more integrated; so maybe instead of freaking out, this time I could step into new behavior and ask myself if I can develop some new quality or behavior to respond differently to the challenge, say, for instance, become bigger, faster, more insightful, more responsive?  I looked at the thing that had felt so threatening, and said, “I can be different [in relation to this],” and felt myself reorient and strengthen in my core, and breathe with deep relaxation.

So when I first saw the bruise tonight, I looked at it through those new eyes.

Something is going on, but I’m not speculating now, other than to say I believe it’s high tech.  And I’ll respond.

I’ll write more as I experience, reflect, imagine, dream, feel, and understand it.