An article on Shamanism written by Paul, co-founder of Shamanic Vision, several years ago. Paul is now in the spirit realm.
Shamanism is NOT a quick fix magical solution. Sometimes though it may provide a solution that hits at the core of an issue. It all depends on the guidance that comes through from your Guides and your Soul itself.
Remember, we are working on your Soul here—what the soul wants and does not want.
Sometimes, our souls take on contracts and agreements, a life plan to fulfill. Because of these agreements — which the soul has made prior to its birth — the only understanding that may come through in a shamanic journey is why this situation happened. We can then ask what needs to be done to resolve the issue from your Guides and/or your Soul itself.
Shamanism is not always about fixing the problem. It is about “understanding” the situation.
What is Shamanism about?
Sometimes the Soul can heal and the Guides will suggest what to do. The work post guidance has to be done by the client. The shamanic practitioner is just a medium to show you the mirror about what is going on and what needs to be done.
Sometimes, though, accepting a situation, may be the only solution as this is what the Soul wants and has agreed upon.
Although understanding and awareness may throw a lot of light on the issue, post shamanic work is equally important or rather more important. This could be anything from working with your energy bodies to belief changes, working with power integration, building a relationship with your Guides and Power Animals, soul healing and other aspects of health as guided.
Spirits are outside the realms of time and space and hence how much time a particular resolution takes, is an individual situation.
Yet, if one sticks to the guidance and keeps treading the path, miracles are possible.
Transformation is a process. Shamanism is not like taking a pill for headache. One has to feel into it and through it to allow it to transform your mind so you can feel and fully embrace the gifts of your soul. Energy is thick right now with so much warfare upon the planet. You come into this world to elevate that energy and this takes time.
Listen to the whispers of your soul. Think how far you have come instead of seeing as “nothing is happening.”
Once the guidance and next steps have been shared by the practitioner, their work is over. It is difficult to say how much time you will take to embrace, allow and deepen the healing.
The only thing between you and the healing is the will to heal. Allow it. Feel it.
The old seed has been weeded out and the new seed has been planted. It takes time to grow in to a fully nourished tree. Ask your Guides and Power Animals how you need to work at emotional level and with your belief systems to see the results. Continue working with your Power Animals.
Say to yourself again and again: I release the resistance to heal. All is unfolding for my highest good. I allow and am open for the healing that my Guides and Power animals bring me.
Implement the guidance and absorb the lessons which are involved. That’s is the true path to healing.
On the Empowerment Circle WhatsApp group, for the months of April, May and June, we’re doing FREE 1-hour webinars on various topics. We have one on 3rd May from 6-7 PM IST on Shamanism and Purpose. Do join the group for updates here.
I have been fortunate enough to be embraced by the sea, as her daughter.
I have always loved her and felt so deeply held and loved by her.
With Mother Sea
She had impregnated me with the seed of birthing “The Sea is My Mother” retreat which not only brings us home to our own selves but also teaches us all about the Sea as a healing methodology.
At the recently concluded part 2 of sea healing retreat
The planted seed gestated in me and finally in 2016, the seed come to fruition when I birthed and delivered my very special baby, “The Sea is My Mother.”
This baby kept growing through me year after year. But then, suddenly, after 2020, I went through deep death myself.
As the dark night of the soul began to lift its darkness, the desire to share the fruits of the sea with everyone was born again.
When we gathered in August 2024 in Kerala, we realised that the baby had grown so much in me even without me nurturing or mothering it consciously, that 3 nights 4 days just were not enough for fully embracing her MAGIC AND GIFTS.
The students who participated in August were hungry for more. I was passionate to birth more and offer more and more fully not just of myself but also of the Mother Sea.
And so Sea is my Mother part two was born.
While making my teacher’s notes, I felt that this time it will not be as intense as always. And yet, a part of me kept saying, “your notes will get thrown aside and something else will come up.”
Well, I was not worried about that because spontaneity and teaching as per what the group energy demands in that moment is very much my wheel house. And yet the mind was curious and obviously keeping me on tenterhooks as to what might come up.
What came up was so intense and such a deep cleanse.
The sea waved her magic wand and the mermaids and mermen came welcoming us too.
We realised where we have tamed ourselves, our voices, our beings, our bodies, our expression.
Sea is my Mother part two was a deep immersion which my words fail to describe. And the best part? We all are still hungry for more!
What this hunger will lead to? Only time will tell.
In some of us pain often leads to numbing or masking of the Self. When it feels too much to feel pain or when the underlying belief is that pain makes us weak, we often distract from feeling it. We hide behind our ambitions and addictions. We use several distractions to deflect from feeling it.
We use our courage to project that we are brave and that we are letting go and moving on. We project that we are leading busy, active, happy lives. We find our anchor in being busy or in other distractions.
Source: Facebook
In this case, we may often go about living our life as if nothing is wrong and every thing is alright. This often comes across to everyone as being healed and moving on. It may not really be so and it may only be an illusion that every thing is alright.
Just like everything and everyone else, pain too, needs an “acknowledgement.” It may take time but it often finds its way through.
Sooner or later pain does find its way and screams out loud so that we may pay attention. Sometimes it strikes as mental illness, sometimes as physical symptoms and sometimes as a different crisis like an accident or some other life threatening situation or a deep personal loss.
Sometimes it projects as strife with family members. In many cases, our children often project our own buried stuff. If we pay attention, we see the presence of our own pain in some of their behaviours or even in their rebellion. Sometimes pain screams through our outbursts.
Pay attention to what your body is saying.
Then there are some of us, who feel everything quite intensely. Pain cuts us deep and tears us open. Feeling it and processing it feels like a never ending roller coaster ride. Often it breaks us or leads us to a deconstruction. Rebuilding from there, feels more energy consuming, tiring and simply impossible.
Because of the intensity of the pain, we may unconsciously wall our hearts so that we may not be hurt again. We block our receiving. And, we might keep circling back to the pain over and over again inspite of numerous healing attempts. The rebuilding feels scary and here we may find our anchor in the safety of the known, in this case our pain.
Pain has the capacity to not just break our hope and spirit, but it also has the capacity to open our hearts and break down our walls, if we allow. In this case, we realise that pain is a messenger and it has a lot to teach us. It draws our attention to aspects of self we tend to bury, mask, deny or ignore because of fears – fears which spring through our upbringing or past imprints.
There may be some of us who may allow pain to be an initiation. I am not saying that pain is or should be a pre-requisite for growth or spiritual evolution and healing. But pain can be a mirror reflecting deepest aspects of the self – aspects of the self we are afraid to own, look at and dive into.
This approach to pain that it is not here to destroy us but actually reconstruct us may take a lot of patience, courage and inner resilience. It may feel tempting to look the other way than understanding its wisdom and work towards integrating and embodying it.
A deep acceptance of what is, in spite of volatility and uncertainty, becomes the need of the self. Deep pain, often propels us towards deep surrender. In this case, the person often finds his/her anchor in the Self and in the Divinity and Magnificence of all that is.
What is your anchor? Where do you naturally levitate towards?
I was invited by Karan & Shokhi of the Happily Whatever After podcast on their episode of Sacred Connections. In the conversation, we dived deep into the power of spirituality to transform relationships. I shared insights into why we often attract the “wrong” partners and how this is linked to unresolved patterns within ourselves. You can listen to part 1 of the podcast on YouTube here.
More often than not, we assume that a person going through grief needs privacy or isolation. Although, everyone grieves differently, grief is so heavy that it needs an unconditional presence, a container to be held and most importantly be witnessed non judgementally.
Grief has no timeline and more often than not, we judge the person whose grief lingers. Statements like you are attached to the comfort of pain, let go, move on, be brave, are often more damaging than the density of grief itself.
When we invalidate a person’s grief in the name of being strong or moving on, we not only invalidate the loss and the emotion of grief, we also invalidate The PERSON experiencing distress.
Grief is a wave. It ebbs and flows. Just like the waves of the ocean. If we do not control it or negate it, it comes forth and then very naturally retreats.
We often try to fight it because:
We have numbed our emotions because of shame and fear
We are tired of grieving or
We some how feel ill equipped to process our pain, do not have the liberty/comfort or resources to feel and process it
A person who has been unable to process, feel or metabolise one’s emotions may find it difficult to BE PRESENT to other person’s grief.
We often feel inadequate when someone is grieving. We do not know what to say, how to behave and how to react or respond.
This innate sense of inadequacy subconsciously propels us to give suggestions, advise or gyaan to the person grieving. We do not realise that we are only trying to make our own little child feel adequate. It is indeed not supporting the person in pain.
Encouraging a person to feel his or her grief while being present unconditionally to what they might experience can more often than not be THE BIGGEST contribution to that person’s existence at that point in time.
When this gesture is absent, the undigested pain can often give rise to another wounding in the person’s grieving. Thoughts like do I matter, why should I live, does my pain matter, is something wrong with me might become the centre stage of the grieving person’s existence.
I personally experience a lot of unrest, shame and anger when my pain is invalidated and not witnessed.
It is perhaps this frustration and anger with the collective that might have contributed to my illness in the grieving period.
And perhaps my pain of feeling invalidated over and over again has given rise to my desire to exit this world time and again. I have been wise enough to not let this voice overrule other voices and instincts. I have been fortunate enough to have a spiritual foundation to support me through my teachers and student community whenever I am stuck or go through a crisis. That said, it has not been easy and continues to be a herculean task.
I miss physical presence when I am grieving. I miss soothing words when I am in pain. I miss someone nurturing me as I navigate through my pain. I miss physical touch and comforting when I am grieving or in pain (physical or mental).
I succumb to being a victim at times. Alas, I am only human.
I am a warrior. But the warrior is now tired.
I hear myself and my thoughts and feelings every day. Sometimes I continue to grieve bitterly and sometimes I swallow the lump in my throat.
While articulating the journey of grief, I wonder today whether my disturbed mental health is because of the various lumps I have consciously and unconsciously swallowed – of anger, of despair, of frustration, of loneliness.
There are many grieving communities in the world and one can turn to them for support in the lonely journey of our grief, trauma and pain. I often introspect why I didn’t turn to these communities when I was at the peak of my grieving period. I do not know. Perhaps I was afraid or rather my orphaned inner child was afraid of being ostracised, isolated or judged AGAIN.
Perhaps now, I am becoming ready, bit by bit daily to offer grief education and grief support so that whatever I have gone through or am going through, others who are experiencing grief, may not have to go through.
Many times we need healing or counselling. But more often than not, we just need love and a nonjudgemental presence to be a witness to our pain and most importantly to feel, “We belong and we MATTER.”
I personally believe that the fundamental need within each one of us is to know and believe in our cells, that WE MATTER.
And I wish to tell each one of us going through an existential crisis or some kind of pain or grief, however big or small, that YOU MATTER.
I was a mischievous kid in my growing up school years. And yet I was a loner and a rebel.
Even in those years when kids have fun, I was over accountable, over impeccable, over committed and over idealistic.
Top it with being emotional, intense, a deep feeler and a thinker, it made me quite a package.
Sprinkle it with vulnerability and naivity, having clarity of what I wanted to do and BE and yet be befuddled when it came to external maps and roads; be a recluse and yet a leader, one might feel, it’s quite a dichotomy filled combination.
When I was with my twin flame Paul in my 40s, he often called me a person filled with dichotomy. I would often wonder, “I am such a simple person, I am the same inside out, every one can literally read my face, so where is the dichotomy?”
Having gone through so much after he passed and doing a life review, I can clearly see and perhaps now understand what he meant.
I do not know whether being a dichotomy filled person is a problem or a gift. But this is who I was and perhaps am.
After he passed, I knew that I only wanted to live for my purpose, clear all my baggage of lifetimes together so that I didn’t have to come back again on this earth to deal with it.
And yet as days, weeks, months and years went by, I didn’t know who I was. I started losing a sense of self and that was immensely rattling to the ego. The ego needs identity and here something was happening in my field that was shaking the ground beneath my feet.
I struggled to hold tightly to the identity that I held so closely to my chest, for, who was I without it and what was I if not for that?
The ground beneath my feet was so shaken that in practical life and living I had a difficulty for such small matters as fetching an auto rickshaw and going to the market for mundane chores.
Nothing felt certain. I didn’t understand what was happening to me or rather inside of me.
All I knew that there was breakdown of identity and no sense of SELF.
My self assuredness was gone. All I was left with was grief for Paul’s passing, abandonment and rejection (for not having anyone by my side as I was grieving), shame because I was not feeling any more inner strength and a feeling of being an utter total failure.
It brought forth a huge existential crisis and a death urge. The despair was humongous and my body just couldn’t contain it.
The declaration that I wish to FINISH it all in this life time brought upon its own share of initiations and challenges.
Illness struck one after the other. The emotional ruckus brought more illness and illness brought more grief.
I got entangled in this loop of healing, healing and healing.
There was no LIVING.
As I am beginning to say goodbye to perhaps the most difficult 4 years of my life, I am making a vow to myself to LOVE and LIVE again.
It doesn’t feel easy. My life has never been easy. From a girl child whose mother beat herself up just because a girl was born, harbouring the feeling of being awkward, rejected and a loner all life long, to having lost my studies, career and mother to her menopausal depression and suicide to having lost Paul and falling prey to menopausal depression myself, life feels like having come to a full circle.
A part of me feels so detached from my purpose and yet another part of me feels so elated after I have completed a teaching session. Am I done with what I have come here on this planet earth to do?
Is it time to say goodbye? Perhaps not. What feels true is that it’s time to live the life unlived.
It’s time to drop the need to do something or become something but it’s time to live truly the ordinary and not just live it but truly explore and enjoy it…to not just live from a sense of duty and purpose alone but truly with a sense of dancing with this life with wild abandon.
The human existence is as special and extra ordinary as our spiritual quest which often becomes another layer and level of entanglement with the ego.
It’s time to become still…it’s time to flow…it’s time to LIVE again.
