In our apprenticeship with the late Mom and Vince Stogan, Coast Salish Musqueam shamans, Vince told me to be aware that I might have a vision revealing how to paint my face during ceremonies and healings. Vince was correct.

The following is most important in understanding awakening the divine fire within our hearts, thus achieving a consciousness of Radical Nonduality … the ability to have a vision, to access the Otherworld while awake during the day while not under the influence of alcohol or hallucinogens, or in a meditative trance state:

I was not in a fasting state. I was not meditating. I was not under the influence of a drug-induced trance. It was during the day, late afternoon, that I had my vision. Since Vince verified it was a true vision, it further proves the knowledge and ability of having a consciousness and awareness of radical nonduality. This was not a product or a subjective view of my mind but a visual reality of the Otherworld while awake and conscious in this dualistic world.

The story from our memoirs: Tequila and Chocolate:

My enthusiasm for running eventually led me to this vision. My daily runs took me to Fort Williams, a park situated on the Atlantic Ocean in Cape Elizabeth, Maine.

My runs would average four miles. Halfway through the run, I would jump up on one of the gun emplacements and do a hundred quick push-ups, then jump back down to continue running. After a few minutes, I would return to the same spot and do another 100 push-ups, jump down, and continue my run back to our home.

I was known in the community as the runner and the fitness guy. Even the park ranger knew me. I would wave and smile at him on my runs. Once he stopped me to relate what had happened over the weekend. An agitated woman had confronted him with her concern that a “crazy man” was acting strangely out on the point. He smiled and said to me, “I assured her that’s only ‘Rocky.’ He’s not crazy and won’t hurt you.”

Years after being labeled a “crazy man,” I had my paint color vision. I asked for this vision during one of my runs and it happened during my second round of push-ups. As I jumped up while running in place for a few seconds, I happened to look down into the ocean water and I saw an image of a sea creature and my paint colors of black and red.

Black and red, I thought as I jumped off and continued my run. Outside the fort, on shore road I came across a dead snake. I picked it up and realized that it was a spirit snake, as Vince had taught us how to tell if a dead snake is a spirit snake – a gifting from spirit. Talon marks on the serpent reveals a raptor (feathered) had caught the serpent took into the sky and then dropped it: a feathered serpent symbolizing the union of earth and sky!

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When I got back from my run, excited by the prospect of knowing how to paint my face, I told Sher about my experience. We wondered if it was a true vision because we had never seen anyone wearing two different colors of paint on their face. Later that evening I called Vince in Vancouver to tell him about my experience. I was concerned that the image and the paint colors were just wishful imaginative seeing.

As I related the story to Vince and said I didn’t think it was a true vision given that we’d never seen those paint colors on any of the dancers in the long-house during the winter dance season, he laughed and said (paraphrased), “Of course, you wouldn’t. Those are my face paint colors, the colors of a medicine person, or shaman. You only saw the all-black face paint of the warrior or all red of the healer, but the Indian doctor’s face paint is black and red. And what to do with the serpent . . .” What Vince told me next is private knowledge and can’t be revealed in print.

Outside of identifying me as a shaman/medicine person, what is the significance of my paint colors? In various indigenous traditions these are the colors of Venus, known as the sacred twin, in its two phases as the morning star (red) and evening star (black). Additionally, concerning my connection with Quetzalcóatl, “the red and black coloration provides an intriguing link with the cult of Quetzalcóatl, for the Aztecs said that Quetzalcóatl died in the ‘land of writing’ (tlilan tlapallan), meaning literally ‘the land of red and black,’ the colors used in Mayan writing.”

Furthermore, “black and red in conjunction signify wisdom.” Quetzalcóatl is the god of wisdom.  Finally, according to Miguel León-Portilla in, Aztec Thought and Culture – A Study of the Ancient Nahuatl Mind, “the wise man is black and red ink. But since these colors symbolize the presentation of and knowledge about things difficult to understand, and about the hereafter, throughout Nahuatl mythology, the obvious metaphorical implication is that the wise man possesses “writing and wisdom.”