A memory, a story, a tribute
It has been a little over a week now (August 16, 2024) that Tom Brown Jr left the physical plane. The world has lost a great teacher, a conscious avatar, a true shaman, one who changed so many people’s lives for the better, one whose passion for his vision, the teachings and relentless service a great gift to the world and the Absolute. River, his youngest son, gave the news to us, the Tracker Family, in a video on YouTube. Deepest gratitude to River and the way he shared it. Since then lots of pictures and stories have been posted in the Tracker FB fan group, which has really been heartwarming and has had a very connecting effect.
The images included here are all I have, I fotographed them with a cell phone to get a digital version. They were given or sent to me back then by other students as I didn’t have a camera in those years. I am in deep gratitude. Tom’s impact on my life was profound.
While I don’t really have “one of those” stories to tell, there is nonetheless a story, which is my experience with Tom and the tracker family and school, though by name I only for sure recall a handful of the other students and several instructors. Tom always encouraged sharing experiences and said: it helps others, and even if you don’t have anything to share now, there will be a time when it is your turn. And there was.
Okay, so, back in the summer of 1989, I had moved Long Island, NYC, to continue medical training. One weekend day I took the LIRR to Manhattan and ended up in a bookstore. I remember the room, and the wall and there was this book: Tom Brown’s Field Guide to Nature and Survival for Children.
After reading it, I thought and felt that there was nothing in this book that I didn’t agree with. Something just felt like a 100% yes, that with the help of the info in the back of the book, I registered for a standard class early 1990. Back then, the Standard was a prerequisite to attend any other classes. I felt incredibly lucky that it was happening in New Jersey! It was a time of buses and trucks. What an adventure. The dates on the images may or may not be 100% accurate, but certainly are in the ballpark.
Having arrived, and before class began, just chatting with some people, some mentioned the word guru in relation to Tom. In fact, there seemed to be a bunch of people who held him in some kind of very high esteem. Me: I had no idea why, had not been on any “spiritual” path, didn’t really know what people meant by guru. I had read that one book and was coming to a survival skill class.
There were 50 of us, or so my memory tells me. We were sleeping packed like sardines in a can upstairs in this barn on what was called “The Farm”, unless you brought a tent and were camping outside. There was survival stew for food which we had to prepare ourselves. One day, I think it was Thursday, there lunch was peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Not having grown up in the USA, I had previously just wondered how or why people ate such a thing but learned to like that there, the only sweet thing around all week.
The classroom in the barn, which a lot of you remember, was rustic with hard wooden benches, a large whiteboard in the front, and Tom’s chair, and was packed, with people. One of the things Tom said was that for this one week, just put aside your training, anything you have learned and just play. Like put it on the shelf and take it back at the end. Allow yourself to play. Okay, that sounded good. I was willing to do that.
During that Standard class, I seemed to go through various stages of “relationship” in regards to Tom. First it was just, okay, I am here with all these people, curious. And willing, open to this playing. When he said …this room is packed, meaning with invisible to me beings…well, if you say so…
Next day I thought wow, he is a really good teacher. Some admiration crept in.
One of the days I was totally “in love” with him, OMG.
It was apparently a time of change for Tom, separating/divorcing from his first wife. Debbie was at that class, and during one of the breaks, sitting on the right side by the door, she said: “You can’t treat people like that”. I didn’t know what that was about, but together with a remark from one of the instructors, I got the impression that okay, there is another side to Tom that is possibly challenging to be around. Reality check, he is human too. Okay.
I had befriended another student in the class. At some point we were sitting outside and Tom came by, sitting with us. There were others too. I don’t recall any of the conversation, but at some point I asked: What happened to Rick? Oh the silence, Tom didn’t look at me but slightly off to the side.
I had no idea. Didn’t recall having heard anything about what happened to Rick. This must be a taboo subject? Later Leslie, the other student, said maybe I said it to be noticed? I thought about that, didn’t know, to me I was just curious. But given that at some point in class Tom pointed to her and said : “And YOU could be giving that class” I now think there was a recognition between them and that is maybe why he sat with us. I don’t know, only that I felt pretty horrible for days, wondering till just before I left if I would ever even be allowed to take any other class ever again.
Meanwhile the basics of wilderness survival were taught. There was Big Frank and Little Frank and other instructors. Making a fire from scratch felt primal.
I remember the exact point where my healing began. In the sweat lodge, my first ever, when Tom called out: “Let the healing begin”.
By the time the last day rolled around, I knew that Philosophy classes is where I must go (which changed my entire life’s direction, opened windows of perception, but that is another story).
By the end of that first week week I understood why someone would call Tom a guru.
I recognized him as a Master on an entirely different level. Anyway, on the last day just before everyone left, Tom was giving everyone hugs. The entire class, at least those that had not left early, stood in line and everyone got their turn. Me, standing on the right side of the classroom, next to the bench, with my backpack on the bench, wondered if I was worthy.
Tom had looked at me there at some point, I looked at him. Eventually, with the line being very short now, I walked over there taking my chances. And of course he hugged me. I remember the blue of his T-shirt and the chest more than anything, his arms around me. Best, most impactful hug of my life, which I didn’t fully recognize till years later. Something happened there, got transmitted that I didn’t find out till I worked with some other people more than a decade later. At some point when leaving the room, he said: I’ll see you again. It is only then that I knew I could come back.
I took Philosophy 1, 2, 3, the 2 week Back to Back and also a class in
Oregon with Frank and Karen till, being on a J-1 visa, I had to move back to Germany in 1992.
In Philosophy 1 something occurred that literally blew my mind and allowed my life to change direction. The figurine below, which I carved and polished during that class, played a crucial part in it. That is a whole other story.
Something profound happened for me in each of the classes, like that time on the ground in the Pine Barrens staring at a few physical fox tracks for hours until perception opened suddenly and I could see the spirit tracks, some imprint left that wasn’t physical.
I still miss my original Beck knife that somehow got lost.
Once back in the USA in 1995, I took philosophy 4 which was at the boy scout camp, which is where I must have gotten the card of this drawing of him which you can see below. It was a time for crow-cue stick and water bending. It was very very cold that week. I remember Debbie and the 2 boys, and the smoking. Tom, I tried to bring my brother to you after you said I could, but he never made that leap, following another path.
After that class, I was strongly guided to something else (a whole other story) and ended up studying at (and graduating from) the Barbara Brennan School of Healing, Hakomi. Leaving the traditional medical system and life, I moved across the country and became part of a different spiritual community headed by someone who is considered/called a high tech shaman. There have been several teachers and methodologies I explored or got exposed to. Sometimes I wondered if I wasn’t just digging many shallow wells, rather than one deep one, but finally just realized, I was using various digging tools to go deep. In addition, many of the classes that were available decades later just were not offered at the early time in the school.
Over the years, it often was: ah, so that is what Tom meant, oh, I see, …it was that prove me right or prove me wrong thing, and he was right every time. So many years later, and over and over. I basically checked everything anyone else was teaching against what I had learned and experienced or already knew.
“Would you die for a square foot of the earth and not have anyone know about it”? That is how I remember the question and it became a yardstick for me.
More and deeper recognition of the teachings as the decades went by and I did and do the work I do. For a few years I did have a small healing practice and once online was a thing, was guided to offer distance energy healing once a week for free for whoever needed it. I always remembered: once you start, they are just going to show up, the beings. This went on for a little over 3 years and during that same time, I wrote the Birdie Transformation Portal/Program.
Through the years, I welcomed the newsletters which came in occasionally. Very appreciated that he did that, announcing courses and keeping the Tracker Family up to date on major happenings.
I have had other teachers, including animals. Trauma ran deeper than I ever suspected and a final breakthrough came through working with a fledgling Brewer’s Blackbird a few years ago. In August of 2018 it died under tragic, unfortunate circumstances. In fully conscious intensity of agony and feeling, it was at that time that a final recognition occurred regarding certain events in my life and its impact on my entire life, choices, beliefs, ways of being from infancy onward. Big release and freeing of energy. Life and me felt energetically different from then on and it felt like this is how any teenager should feel ready to leave home. There is a sense that I was done with what is considered the healing journey. At the same time I can perceive/feel/sense this force that is in charge, and that ran through me and my life, guiding events from before my life even started. A thread and purpose and an intention that is not born of the separate sense ego self.
Anyhow, although integration was still happening and there is always much new learning, new territory, the healing journey was completed. Thirty years after that “let the healing begin” in the sweat lodge, after years away from the Tracker School, though never really having left at all, proving him right many times, I felt drawn back and I took an online class in January 2019, Conveyance, and there he was. It was good to be there, even online. Tom’s body was still strong, though not the same, it had been 30 years after all, but his spirit was.
I was impressed that after all this time, he brought what appeared to be new notes for the class, detailed notes. He showed them to us as his notes. This is the only part I took a screenshot of. It impressed upon me the dedication, willingness, preparedness, always practicing and honoring the teaching, treating each class as a new thing, a new happening. Each class different, new…which is true.
In October 2022, there was the online Spiritual Combat class. Saw some names there in class I recognized from the 90ties and it again felt good to reconnect and be part of the Tracker family. Tom looked more frail then.
I had wondered, having now lived in a different spiritual community for nearly 20 years in very close quarters, one of the hardest things I would ever do, if my path would lead me back more fully to the Tracker School, but again, listening to guidance, it lead me elsewhere, this time to train in and become certified in Holobody Health Coaching and Women Centered Transformational Coaching.
Even that is done and what remains is living in the mystery, doing what needs to be done with the obligations I have taken on, always listening to that inner voice, sensing this force, this guidance, in the moment, surrendering, exploring What Is on ever deeper level. I understand more fully what is contained in a blade of grass, why Tom could get excited about that. He might be the only one I have known who would not think I am crazy. It feels like another journey has only begun. There seems to be always another level, another lesson, another dimension.
Tom is my first teacher here on earth in this lifetime who I recognized as such. He is a Master in this and many other realms. The world is better off, humanity’s consciousness raised and the Absolute somehow evolved because of his life and work, living his vision with passion and fulfilling his sacred obligation till the very end.
The day he died, August 16, 2024, his presence was in my morning meditation, as had been the case a couple of other times in recent weeks. There was and is such gratitude and love. I expressed that to him. And he knew it. He was there in a way that I have experienced several times before when people died. I had not heard anything but thought I would not be surprised if he had died. And so the news did not actually come as a surprise. The overwhelming sense is gratitude.
There are of course more stories, even though I never made it to any Scout class, or Temple of the Soul, or caretaker position, or volunteer or many other classes. I never really experienced his pranky humor that I heard about from so many of the Tracker students in the group.
Sometimes I wish that it had been possible for me, as it was for many tracker students, to remain just with this one teaching and school, but that was not meant for me. I have learned to trust my inner guidance.
I am sitting here with this deep sense of loss. The world lost a great one and, at the same time, as Tom was in contact with grandfather, so he will guide us whenever there is a real need for anyone. He has not actually died.
If you read all this, thank you. I am grateful to be part of this Tracker Family. Thank you everyone who shared their images and stories in the FB fan group, I loved reading them all. If I remember correctly, for some time Tom’s letters were signed – All Good Medicine.
This is excerpted from a post by Rick Berry and Juan Villarreal on FB August 24, 2024. Rick heads the 4EEE non profit in California.
Last week Legendary Tracker, Teacher, and Author, Tom Brown Jr. journeyed to the Spirit World. Our Condolences and prayers to Tom’s Family. It is the end of an Era of a man who fully lived his Vision. His passion and love for sharing Grandfather Stalking Wolf’s Vision was incredible, so inspirational, the concentric rings traveling worldwide. The concentric rings will continue to ripple out for generations to come.” Rick Berry
“Tom has moved on to teach from within each one of us. If we allow ourselves to clear our minds and sit quietly and listen, see and feel, he, along with our Ancestors will share their love and knowledge of our Mother and more. Tom once taught about time. How it doesn’t exist as we understand it. If we carry a specific memory and work to clarify its details, it can be considered a form of time travel.” Juan Villarreal
You did your very best to teach and transmit. They won’t be disappointed.
