Roger Welsch - The Reluctant Pilgrim: A Skeptics Journey into Native Mysteries

This book hasnt been easy to write. I figured if it ever found its way into publication, however, it would be my forty-some-odd book, so simply the usual problems of writing and publishing a book havent troubled me. Instead, yes, I am about to reveal personal stories that I am a bit uncomfortable about making public; yet these events have had such a profound effect on me that I am eager to tell others about them even though they may seem preposterous to anyone who has not experienced them with me or who has not even experienced anything like them. I suppose there is something in this matter about wanting to save the world by shouting out the truth, but more than that, I would like to have other people, especially sympathetic friends, know whats going on with methat is, simply put, Something Is Going On. I will repeat this phrase throughout the book because it is in brief what the book is about.

Ill admit I am reluctant to face the inevitable ignominy that comes with admissions such as those I am about to make here. Okay, Im a coward. We no longer burn or drown witches, stone wizards, or commit to asylums those who think Something Is Going On around us other than officially sanctioned supernatural experiences, but we still make it damned uncomfortable for people who talk about things magical, mystic, unexplained, spooky, or even crazy. And curiously, it is precisely those who insist there are supernatural experiences, the hypersanctimonious, who insist that only approved, official people can have them and can have them only through official channels sanctioned by them and their authorized social mechanisms. (More about that later... in fact, a lot more about that later!)

I am going to tell you as little about myself as possible, not simply because I am not ready to face the ridicule that would certainly follow my revealing the stories that follow. For one thing, if you are reading this book, you probably already know a bit about me. Over my long life I have acquired a small public reputation. I worked hard to acquire it, and as important as I believe the story of my spiritual journey is, I do not want to expose myself or my family to embarrassment even while I want to share what I know with them and others. I suppose we all know, at least to some degree, that we are mortal. But there are also varying degrees of possible avoidance of that reality. I am now of an age (seventy-eight at this writing) and condition (all at once this body, which has been such a reliable conveyance for me, is showing signs of substantial deterioration) that any reluctance I might have had to reveal unconventional personal experiences when I was younger is fading fast too. As I age, I have ever less to risk by way of reputation, status, and certainly wealth. (By way of validating that but certainly not bragging, I would like to note that my wife, Linda, and I have already divested ourselves of most of our propertyat least our home and real estate holdingsby returning them to the Pawnee Nation from which they were stolen a century and a half ago. The return to us from that decision has been generous... with enough further mystic experiences directly coming from that return to fill a few more chapters in this book!) The bottom line is increasingly I have nothing to lose in baring these craziest occurrences of my life. So while I first wrote this book as an anonymous confession, I have now decided to face the music and make it clear that these are the personal experiences, impressions, doubts, hopes, and wonderments of me, Roger Lee-Flack Welsch. Not an easy decision.