Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
Committing to the Path
1. "Why study Shamanism?"
This is probably the most commonly asked question today. And do you know why so many people ask it? Because we are brought up in a society that does not have Shamanism. Worse than that, we are brought up without community. In the old days, we were raised with a strong community around us. We lived together, played together, grew up together and sometimes even died together. We had elders, doctors, teachers and advisors right there for us, within our strong, close-knit community.
Part of the work of Shaman elders was to watch the children of the community to determine what each child's strength was. Those skills or gifts were encouraged as the child grew into whatever came naturally to him or her. It was the community, the elders, the teachers, and the parents who realized the blessings, and who were happy to help the child be what he or she was meant to be in life.
Today, we have no such possibility for ourselves or for our children. For the most part, we are raised to fit into a box; to learn what everyone else learns and to ignore or abandon anything that does not fit into society's preset patterns and ideas. It doesn't have to be this way! We have a choice. It is not too late to look inside and find those special gifts we were born with by studying Shamanism.
What are these gifts? Healing the spirit is the primary function of a Shaman.
Soul-retrieval is the gift by which the Shaman retrieves pieces of a person's lost soul. This is often accomplished by journeying to the spirit world and requesting assistance from the spirits, ancestors, and guides that dwell in other realities or worlds. These beings assist the Shaman in discovering what is wrong with the person. They often help the Shaman contend with the being now possessing those parts to win them back and return them to the patient. Examples of people displaying the classic symptoms of needing a soul retrieval would perhaps include those suffering from a mental illness, those abused as children, or those who sense that something is missing in their lives.
Soul restoration consists literally of the restoring of one's soul. This gift is used when a person is near death and his/her soul seeks to move on. This "death" could be the result of a psychic attack or an accident from which the body has recovered physically, but not spiritually.
Hands-on healing is most certainly a shamanic gift. This technique is still widely used today by Reiki practitioners, massage therapists, chiropractors and Shamans. Shamanistic hands-on healing involves the energy or spirit of the Shaman working with the energy or spirit of the patient.
Divination is the gift by which a Shaman can foretell the future, describe the illnesses of people and find their cures. Divination shows the Shaman the path the patient should walk to receive their healing. The most common Shamanic method in divination is journeying to the Otherworld to request information from the elders, guides and spirits who live there. It has been said that Genghis Khan used his Shamans in this way.
Herbal healing gives credence to the true belief that the Shaman is a medicine man or doctor. Herbal healing began with the beginning of the earth. Many of the hunting and gathering tribes had the ability to heal with plants indigenous to their areas. Today, this knowledge is fast disappearing as Shamans everywhere try to support the preservation of indigenous plant life and the lore surrounding them.
Dreamwork or dream interpretation is another Shamanic gift for healing. Shamans will listen to the dreamer relate an unusual or disturbing dream, and work with it until they feel a connection to it. They may then dream that dream themselves in a lucid way to find the message and resolve the conflict presenting itself.
Soul leading is the process in which the Shaman will help those who are crossing over to find the Light. The Shaman is very familiar with this Light and usually sees it in the upper right of his/her field of inner vision. Anthropologist Mircea Eliade says that a Shaman is a "Master of the Ecstatic." The Shaman masters the ecstatic journey because it is here that the power to do these healings can be found.
Each of us has one or more of these gifts buried somewhere inside our spirits. Can you imagine how beautiful this world would be if each of us studied and mastered the gifts we were given? Who would be left sick? Or poor?
2. "Where am I supposed to make room in my life to study any spiritual practice?"
Aho Shaman Elder Maggie,
I don't have time to take a course or a workshop. I have a very full life with work and kids plus my own outside activities. I don't even have enough time for me!
Aho Student!
And now you are taking this course. This course is like a river. I give you an inner tube and you climb in and begin going down this new river. You see things on the shore that look like you and your life, and you see other people there waving at you. These are your guides and teachers and they are glad to see you here! And you find fruit hanging off overhead branches as you glide by. You eat plums and peaches of insight and experience on your ride. Savor them. You are riding your own river and at the end of it, in lessons 10, 11 and 12, the river opens out onto a beautiful lake that you will call home. Now if you choose to, you can grab a branch and stop the ride or grab a rock and hang on or get out of the inner tube and stand on the bank. These are all your choices. But there is no need to do that. You are safe, you are seeing you and coming into your own power; the power of the river.
When you describe all that you do in your busy life, I see you standing on the bank watching things floating by in your river. You're saying "Yes, that is mine. That is mine." and "That is mine, yep, those right there are my own!" But you are not in the river! Your life is going by while you stand on the riverbank watching it go! This course invites you to get into the river within the safety of your inner tube; to actually be in the river, flowing along, observing you and learning your power, your skills and your abilities that are right there in the inner tube, right there in your mind and heart now.
You might discover that some of the things that you saw in your river while standing on the river's bank were just reflections of things that are on the riverbank, such as your activities and outside interests. You asked, "Where am I supposed to make room in my life to study any spiritual practice?" Think about it. All these things you see from the shore are experiences and people floating by in the river of you!
Let yourself flow in the river created by this course. Let yourself take what resonates within you and try the exercises. Don't sweat anything; be still, calm and relaxed.
You have an inner tube that you are floating on in the river. You are completely protected! From what? Protected from losing yourself in the hubbub of life, protected from not being yourself, protected from not being loved, protected from not being where you are meant to be in order to receive. Isn't that enough protection for you?
If you fight the current, you are missing out on your life! Your life is the river! Sure, we don't know what is around the next bend, but whatever is there is okay because we have our inner tube! You can trust yourself, your higher self, to get you through anything that comes. There may be a beautiful waterfall and rainbow around that bend but you will never be able to see it while standing on the bank watching your life pass by. It is your choice, of course. But I jumped in with both feet and I am still floating ... and so will you. I have seen so many things ... beautiful, wonderful sights, people, healings and adventures. You can too! It's about being true to yourself and following your own unique river. We only get the opportunity to do this once in this lifetime.
Most of us don't realize that we have an inner tube that keeps us intrinsically safe at all times. The Yaqui "Brujos" or Shamans have a different way of explaining what this inner tube is, but the meaning is the same. The Tibetans also teach it but in a different way. The truth is that you are safe! Even after you die, you are safe! When you were created, you were given this inner tube which is a connection to your higher self, to your own Spirit and to the Source. It is a safety cord that is always present and cannot be taken away. The worst you can do is to ignore it or push it away.
And that is what many people do. Sometimes it is our parents who take its presence away from us and hide it from us because they want to make us dependent upon them. So they only allow us grab onto whatever cord of protection or security they alone might offer us. And then we fear letting go of them. Subsequently, our schools and our churches do the same thing to us! They say "If you leave this church, you will let go of our safety cord and be drowned". Governments do this, our jobs do this and our spouses do this, too. They say, "I have the only security cord, the only safety net for you and if you leave, or don't do things the way I want, you will drown."
But really, we have always had our own security cord, our own inner tube. Other people have hidden it from us because we might not have been so willing to use their cord and therefore we may not have given them our power and obedience, if we'd known we had one of our own all along. But we do have this inner tube from lifetime to lifetime. Ask a little child if they are protected by anything and they will say yes, that they feel protected. That is if their parents haven't already removed this protection from their consciousness.
You might feel as though you are already in the river because you have been studying the water in the river. You've been putting things into the river such as little paper boats, and you've been watching them float around to and fro. You have deliberately been putting things in and taking things out of the river for a very long time. You have paid much attention to your river from the riverbank. You have filled it with activities and outside interests and taken out any stray sticks, like studying spiritual matters or working on your own fears, that come along in its flow. Did you know that you could get seasick by watching a river flow, even though you never get into it yourself?
And what if there was a huge waterfall around the next bend directly in the path of you and your inner tube? You are safe in your inner tube! And what if there were rapids? The inner tube would safely come out the other side, with you in it! And what if there was really rough water? Just hang on and ride through it as you know you are safe and will come out the other side. Yes, there are waterfalls, rapids and rough water in every person's life. And what if you die? Your inner tube will safely carry you right through that as well!
Most people think they are not protected; they don't know they have an inner tube to keep them safe. And when the waters get rough they scramble for the cords that others have given them, to their church, government or spouse, and expect help and protection through that cord. Unfortunately, they usually get nothing from these cords. Often those life cords of protection that outside sources offer us, in return for our allegiance, (and our power) are not real; they cannot protect us. They are strings at best or more likely, entirely made up. And how that hurts the person who trusted and believed that they were protected by their family, church, school, government, job or spouse, when they get into a waterfall situation and find out that the cord they were holding onto cannot protect them and that they are on their own!
But if people knew about their inner tube, they would not be afraid of anything. They would know that no matter what happens, they are safe and protected by this inner tube that is so real and so much bigger and better than anything man can offer. I wish I could teach this to the world.
It is possible to jump into the river and float along. And when things get tough, you can scramble to the shore and yell for those people who said they had cords to protect you. Unfortunately, they won't come. Sadly, you are left standing outside of your authentic life again; not going into your river and again watching your life pass by.
You only have so many days to go down this river of life. At the end of the river is a beautiful sea; that is your destination, your goal, your home, a place of peace, light and love. So many people never get there in this limited time called life. I want to reach that place. I want to accomplish what I came here to do, which can only be done by reaching the sea. I am not going to spend my time standing on the riverbank waiting for other people to rescue me when I know they can't, missing out on all the wonderful chances to do my work and to find my tools and gifts in the river.
The gifts are there for those floating in their inner tubes. Where is my happiness? Where is my joy? Where is my prosperity? Hanging from limbs over the river as gifts for those who are floating in their inner tubes. You can't reach them from the riverbanks. So many people are standing on the riverbanks just putting activities into the river like little toy boats and watching them float. They think that is enough. But they never get the gifts that are just around the bend.
Life is all about having enough faith to know that you are protected. Who gives you this inner tube? You do! Before you ever came here you gave this inner tube to you! Can you have faith in you? Do you know the "higher-self you" who is completely, entirely and totally at one with the Source?
3. "Am I ready to become a healer?"
As I read this email with care, I was looking at you going through many different life situations from above with the help of my guides and elders. The first thing I noticed was how similar your life experiences were to my own. I too have felt rejection, abuse, and blame, and I've even been at the point of choosing whether to live or die a long time ago. Yes, me too.
And do you know what? So have many others who are taking this course. One of my students asked me why we had to go through so much suffering to reach this point of choosing Shamanism. You may remember from my website that I even talk about this on my home page. But let me tell you in other words.
We come from previous lives as healers. We made an oath at some point in the past to be a healer for all eternity. In the olden days we were born into a Shamanic community. The elder Shaman would recognize us as healers when we were even babies and begin to help us re-member the ways. Today there are few Shamans. We are born into a community that rejects Shamanism. Yet somehow we must remember our ways. So, many of us get tossed and tumbled through many good and bad experiences until we do re-member our ways or find a Shaman to teach us. It is like learning Shamanism on the high seas of the North Atlantic instead of the calm Caribbean, for which this little boat was built. Nonetheless, you are on the right path now and you are re-membering your ways as a healer.
I also asked myself what good all these extreme experiences did for me. Why did I have to go through enough stuff to fill 3 normal lifetimes, so much more than it seems that others ever encounter in their whole lives? And the answer that I found is that all those experiences enabled me to understand completely what you have gone through. I don't just sit here and read your words and say, "I am glad I didn't go through all that! Sorry, sweetheart, I feel for you." I went through all these same experiences so that I can sit here and say, "I have been there. I have done that." I know what it is and what it does to you. I honor you for still being here. I honor me for still being here. I respect you and admire your strength, your courage to do what you feel is right in your heart, and your wisdom to see what is going on your life.
A good teacher is one who teaches from experience. I don't want to be taught about the Vatican from someone who has never even been there. I can learn that much by myself. But if the teacher has visited the Vatican, then he knows what it feels like, he remembers it himself and can teach me the many things that I can't get out of books.
So the reason I experienced all those things in my life is to be able to teach you. I have practiced traditional indigenous Shamanism as taught to me through my own family lineage for over 50 years. I have lived it through many different experiences. I know the bad experiences and the good experiences and I will lead you in the gentlest way of learning that I can. We do not do hallucinogenic trips or use starvation, sleep deprivation, scare tactics or even mutilation as some cultures do. I also don't teach my native cultural Shamanism because they have plants in Russia that they use in ceremonies that we can't get here. What is the point of teaching you something you can't practice? Are we living in Russia, South America or Alaska? Then why learn the Shamanism that is practiced there?
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "The Shaman Speaks"
by .
Copyright © 2011 Maggie Wahls.
Excerpted by permission of Loving Healing Press, Inc..
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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