Consuming Fire: A Shape Shifters Journey

© 2012 Aireal Seas. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse     7/02/2012

ISBN: 978-1-4772-2388-8 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4772-2389-5 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2012910988

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Contents

Consuming Fire TIME LINE:

Dedication

Names of Characters and Places

Preface

Chapter 1   Consuming Fire

Chapter 2   Without End

Chapter 3   Between Worlds

Chapter 4   The Man, The Hawk, and The Healer

Chapter 5   The Journey

Chapter 6   Truth Be Told

Chapter 7   When Love Finds You

Chapter 8   Embracing Change

Chapter 9   Time, and Another View

Chapter 10   The Letters

Chapter 11   Loose Ends

Chapter 12   In a Shape Shifters World

Chapter 13   The Return Trip

Chapter 14   Touch Down in a Forgotten Field

Chapter 15   Growing Truths

Chapter 16   Who Am I

Chapter 17   Being True

Chapter 18   A Deeper Connection

Chapter 19   The Power to Choose

Chapter 20   When The Heart is Free

Chapter 21   Without Fear

Chapter 22   The Power of One

Chapter 23   The Next Step

Chapter 24   Life’s Embrace

Chapter 25   A New Heart

Chapter 26   A New Spiders Web

Chapter 27   Our Eternal Song

Credits and Recognition

About the Author

Consuming Fire TIME LINE:

Dedication

This dream is dedicated to all my relations, 

 all my connections and all my teachers.

Thank You

Names of Characters and Places

Ya’ Tae shaman, medicine teacher, protector

Cooper

Grandfather shape shifter, teacher, healer

Grandmother also the toothless medicine woman

Jed …. given name at birth is Jed-a -di-ah

Jed’s Parents

Ray

Ja-mar-ah

Lou-song, Ray and Ja-mar-ah’s son

Sparrow

Nuda………sounds like { New-Da }

Ma-zoo Warriors

Ma-zeem

Lanaye…….sounds like { La- na- ye }

Reysue…….sounds like { Ray- sue }

Flower

Tywoo, Flowers daughter

Haem……..sounds like { Hay - Em }

The Looker, also a seer and remote viewer

Brackets air service in Iowa

R & J’s

Lilly

Storm

Jeff

Jason’s Bounty Service in Alaska

Elizabeth Ray { Liz } from lawyers office

logging company

hydroelectric dam company

Rain Forest

Sacred Cave of the Elements

Amazon Jungle

Iquitos Peru

Alaska

The Hollow

The Spiders Den

The Rain Forest Orphanage

Lima

Tanze, pronounced {Tan- zee}

Maygan

Brooker

Zimba

Eroes

Dr. Raymond S. Ruben

Mowwee Tribe, pronounced {Mow- we}

Preface

James L. Cooper, known by many only as Cooper is a world traveler and language expert. He was hired by a government owned contract company to go to the Amazon Jungle to learn the language of the Amazon people. The government contract company seeks to find a way for the Logging Companies and Hydroelectric Dam Companies to be able to communicate with the different tribes in the Amazon Jungle.

Unlike other jobs Cooper had done, Cooper finds himself awakening in a reality that will change not only what he knows, but who he thought he was. The deeper he goes into this strange world to learn the languages of the different tribes, the more he becomes one with them. As the Amazon tribes embrace him, Cooper must learn who they are in their environment, if he is to understand their connections to each other and to the land. Cooper would also have to face himself and answer the one question he had never asked himself. Cooper would have to know who he was beyond what he did.

Along the way Cooper meets Ray, a pilot and Jed, a Mazoo prince and warrior plus many others. Entering the world of Amazon shape shifters changes all of them. On this shared journey they face three teachers, a native shaman named Ya‘ Tae, Grandfather and Grandmother.

Both teachers and students weave their lives through the Amazon Jungle, the Rain Forest, the Sacred Cave of the Elements, Alaska, the Hollow in New York, Iowa and back to Peru. Their lives are woven in a tapestry of connections in what Ya’ Tae calls the six legged spider cluster that gives birth to all that lives.

Ya’ Tae, Grandfather and Grandmother teach in mystical and magical way how life was created, as well as who we are and what we are made from. Grandmother shows how without birth, there is no rebirth; without breath, there is no life. She believes change is our only constant inside the power of the choices we make.

Grandfather reaches into hearts and souls to show each one they are their own healers of the dis-ease and separation they come here to this earth to face. He teaches about balance, trust, love and wisdom that awakens the remembering of our eternal connection to the all.

Cooper, Jed and Ray show life is not about what we say we do, but what we do. They face the meaning of life in their own changing forms.

Ya’ Tae teaches why sometimes our hearts must break, our faith must be shattered, and our lives be turned upside down before we face ourselves. Ya’ Tae knows we must break free from our cocoons if we truly want to fly.

Chapter 1 

 Consuming Fire

Pain came like lightning touching the ground and felt like a consuming fire that spread, until it scorched his soul within. As much as his heart longed and ached for change, this was not something he could have imagined. He felt trapped between two worlds, and he no longer knew where he belonged.

This was what Cooper had felt the first time the shape shifting change had come upon him. Sometimes in memories, that long ago moment still felt like yesterday and not the years it had been. His thirst for knowledge had changed since then. Now his life resonated with that which he spoke, that which he knew and that which had changed him forever. He was no longer detached, no more the puppet, or the student speaking what he had once learned in a classroom. Instead, what he thought, he became. He wondered if people should have this kind of power inside them; the power of thoughts that manifest into realities set forth by the mind. In truth most people slept through their lives. They knew not how to control who they were without the limits they set up in both society and their own hearts. How, Cooper wondered would they deal with this power of manifestation, long forgotten, that was so clearly written in all our DNA.

Cooper was good at what he did. He loved the resonation he felt while learning different languages. His was a dream job come true. That was before he had been sent to the Amazon jungle by the government. Cooper knew back then he had had no clear answers to some of life’s mysteries. He thought now maybe what he had in fact was not the right questions. Now, when he felt the familiar pain, and tug to his soul, he would take a deep breath. Without fear, he would close his emerald green eyes, and let the transformation, the shape shifting take its course.

As a man, Cooper stood about five feet seven. His muscles were hard. His coal black hair hung loose and wavy over his shoulders. He weighed about 185 pounds. He sometimes had a thick black beard that covered his face and neck making him look like a mountain hermit. He had learned over the years, and now spoke many languages. His full name was James Lawrence Cooper. Everyone just called him Cooper. He was not sure how many even knew his first name. Cooper had never married. His work was his marriage.

Life had been an adventure, and everything was just the way he wanted it. He had a good life and his thirst for knowledge kept things interesting. He took the jobs he wanted. He did public speaking as part of the agreement he had with companies he worked for to educate people about different cultures. He was age 43 back when the land contract company asked him to go to the Amazon. Cooper’s ability with languages was well known around the world. He had always had a dream of going to the Amazon. Time and lack of money had kept him putting the trip off. This assignment would make his dream to go to the Amazon real and now he would get paid for it.

In the beginning, when he had spoken to public groups; even Cooper had missed the finer point of what he had often said to people. He had reminded them that the point of living was change. Cooper would say change is not always patient, or kind. Change will find us and we can only hope we will be ready to leap into the unknown when it does. Cooper now thought that maybe what he should have spent more time saying and defining was what change was. The people who listened to his speeches laughed with him and at the stories he told. None of them asking what change would mean for each of them individually. Most people just thought Cooper was being overly dramatic.

A part of Cooper’s mind would watch those groups he spoke to, knowing most of them saw these times and speeches as pure entertainment. They had never traveled outside their seemingly save worlds. They saw Coopers stories and words as more illusions, not the reality and truth he knew them to be. Cooper had been impatient to be on his way as he was with every job he was hired to do. Now looking back over that time and the raging fire of change that had defined and consumed him; he knew he never could have imagined just how limited his vision had also been.

Cooper thought back to when he was on his way to sit with this new tribe in the Amazon. He had thought he was ok with his life, speeches, and change. He went as he always had, with an open mind to learn a new language. He had slept in the plane seat beside his duffle bag like a thousand other times. He had not considered how his own words of change finding us, would haunt him and turn his world upside down on this new assignment.

That first time he sat deep in the Amazon jungles talking to what he thought was a frail thin man, who seemed not able to hold himself upright, was when Cooper questioned his own life path. The thin man was dark, like ebony, with graying tight coils of hair around his head and a face that seemed more like patches on a shirt and looked like tiny thread like snakes, sleeping in clusters. This was the most fearsome face Cooper had ever looked into. The mans eyes pierced his soul, and nothing was hidden from him.

The thin man spoke with a chattering vibration that seemed more a song than words in a conversation. The thin ebony colored man’s eyes seemed as full moons standing side by side daring anyone who looked at him to see him for what he was. Cooper told himself to just learn the man’s language and get out of there. Inside his gut was telling him to run away.

Cooper was trying to learn the man’s dialect and to understand this new people when he realized the conversation had taken on a life of its own, as he and the old man talked inside the hut made of the forest fallen trees. A woman who had stood in the shadows came forward with a gourd filled with a steaming liquid. She poured gently no more than a swallow of this amber colored liquid into the green leaf the ebony man held cupped in his hands. The ebony man took Cooper apart with his eyes. He repeated slowly until Cooper could repeat what the Amazon man was saying, Ya’ Tae Eyal, Ya’ Tae Eyal. Then he offered Cooper a leaf, and motioned for him to hold it cupped in his hands like he was doing.

Cooper noticed that as the woman came forward out of the shadows she was far younger than he had first thought. She smelled like smoky wood and burning sap, and her earth brown eyes said she knew far more about him than he knew about himself. She had a toothless grin and her breath seemed more like a hissing viper than breathing. When she glided across the dirt toward him, Cooper had felt both detached and afraid. He thought this whole thing seemed surreal like a dream, like a nightmare.

The thin man before him smiled and as he held Cooper with his eyes, he did not disappear as if saying in this moment I am no dream, no nightmare. This thin man seemed to know Cooper’s thoughts. He motioned for Cooper to drink from the leaf, the liquid the woman had poured into it. The liquid reminded Cooper of a tangy hot whiskey and was honey sweet at the same time.

Cooper’s host had waited with that frozen smile on his face as Cooper drank the liquid. Cooper could feel the sweat run down his face. Cooper felt like he was drowning and dying. Then just before his last breath he thought would take him from this world, he had felt the searing pain tear through him.

Dreams became reality that wrapped themselves around Cooper. The dreams got all mixed up like the gray snake hair on his hosts face and head.

When the pain stopped inside him, Cooper flew free of this earthy place.

He soared high into the clouds. There were no words to describe what this felt like. He only knew he was no longer tethered to the ground in a mans form. Cooper glided with the air pockets, tasting them. Then he flapped his wings in a kind of dance that gave him speed and direction. Cooper hungered no more with his heart. All he knew now and ever wanted was here in the heavens and sky. That was until he saw with hawk’s eyes the long brown snake that slithered in the vines and trees below him.

Cooper, with a desire that consumed his focus, parted the winds before him and with lightning speed headed for the snake. Riding the wind current, and in one breath; Cooper grabbed the snake with his feet and took off, landing on a sheet rock edge on the side of a mountain. There he prepared to consume his meal. He was hungry. The thirst for blood also sharpened his eyes and as his beak opened to tear apart the snake, the face of the thin Amazon man stared back at him. The snake then asked Cooper who he was.

The next memory Cooper had was laying in the bottom of a bark made canoe while two Amazon tribesmen paddled their way down a muddy river. Cooper would wake in the boat and vomit, then would loose consciousness. This had seemed a time loop that lasted for days. Cooper had lost track of how long he was in this boat. He remembered waking one day as the sun stood directly over him. He awoke in the bottom of the canoe, alone and on a white sandy beach. As he tried to lift himself from the canoe, he felt weak. He felt lost. He knew not how to begin again the life he had once known. The two tribe’s men were gone, as was the woman and ebony thin colored man with the coiled snake hair.

What floated in Coopers mind were the words the Amazon man had made him repeat…Ya’ Tae, Eyal, Ya’ Tae, Eyal, and the question the long brown snake asked him,Who are you?

Cooper found he was hungry and saw a reed woven blanket filled with fruit on the edge of the canoe’s seat where one of the tribesman had sat.

He pulled himself up and slowly ate the fruit. The fruit he had no name for. He only knew it seemed to know what he needed and served him from the inside out. Cooper sat there slowly eating. Tears flowed freely down his face. Strange he thought, how you could be alive and never fully live.

Cooper tried to stand but found his legs did not work, as they were like rubber. Cooper crawled across the white sandy beach toward the waters edge to bathe. Even the thought of such a thing made him want to weep for joy at the pleasures of knowing the silver blue waters that waited for him. He lay for a long time letting the moving water caress and clean him. This too, felt like the passion of a dance that consumed him with an intensity of showing him what he was and what he became within the steps and choices he made. Cooper lay there at the waters edge for a long time. The moon took its time coming to the top of the sky.

Stars danced with a brilliance and rhythm of notes in a song. Then the dark clouds came and rain fell like buckets falling from the sky. Cooper felt not separate from the heavens and the earth. Cooper wept as he crawled back to the canoe. He cried out wanting to understand how such beauty could turn in on itself and tear apart what once was. The rain had filled up the canoe and washed it clean. It took the rest of the night for Cooper to empty the water and turn the canoe on its side for a semblance of shelter.

Cooper spent about a week on this beach not able to, or even knowing where to go from here. Every time he woke from scattered dreams the reed basket was again filled with fruit. The choice of what to do next was made for him when he heard the sounds of an airplane coming toward him.

As the plane landed, Cooper sat frozen in time. He wondered how do you talk to another human when you have no answers to who you are. How do you live with a vulnerability that shatters you, exposes you, and remakes you and you still do not understand what was broken, what remains and what is gone. Cooper waited; there was nothing else he could do.

The pilot got out looking more like a computer geek, than a pilot. He had short light brown hair and wore eye glasses that hid some of the freckles on his sun burned face. He weighed about 110 pounds and seemed so out of place here. Cooper could imagine him behind a desk. The pilot said,My name is Ray. Got your message, sorry it took so long to get here. That storm last night had me grounded.

Cooper asked,What message?

The pilot named Ray, smiled, and said,Oh, Ya’ Tae said you would be here when he notified us two days ago.

Cooper froze on the inside and asked how Ya’ Tae notified them and who was Ya’ Tae.

The pilot replied,Oh like he always does. He leaves a note taped to the plane. Don‘t exactly know who he is. Never seen him actually. He leaves a note, that is all we get.

Then the pilot said,That snake sure took its time getting out of the passenger’s seat of my plane though. Dealing with that long brown snake turned out to be a good thing. We did not have the heart to kill it, so we had decided to finally try to capture it. When we got what we needed, we returned to the plane, and the snake had disappeared. If I had not been held up by that snake I would have been caught in the middle of that storm. Oh well, all is well that ends well.

Ray helped Cooper into the airplane, and as they took off Ray said,A package was left for you in the plane.