A channeled message of hope during a time of despair
Not all people are good no, not all people can be saved.
Yes… take a deep exhale. Because… miracles.
Miracles are possibilities, they happen all the time.
I am here to give you hope. Hope when the walls rise up in every direction, and trap you inside, when there are no doors, and no windows. For those times, I am here to tell you to take a deep exhale and expect miracles.
When there seems to be no way out and everything seems dark and cloudy and it feels like the end of the road, and there are only two possibilities: the road either goes on or you die.
It is just for those times, that I give you this hope: if you’re still breathing there is something for you to do here, and if you make your life about always contributing something then you will always have something to apply yourself to.
When I said, not all people can be saved, not all people are good, I meant, yes, help people around you, but be picky about who you help, and who you make friends with. Be picky about who your really deep close friends are, picky about the company you keep, picky about the influences you allow, who you give your love to, and what you let into your life.
What do you eat?
What do you consume?
What do you allow to hurt you or change you or destroy you?
You do have choices. What you choose to consume, what you choose to expose yourself to, the risks you choose to take, the part that you choose to play — these are all choices that are in your hands.
You are not here to suffer.
Yes, here is some suffering that is beyond your control.
Every life has a little bit of suffering, some lives have a lot.
But we can soften the suffering with our attitude to not grow hard in the suffering. I’m not here to tell you you can avoid suffering. We are here to do hard things and some of those hard things are not by choice. We are here to do hard things, the hard things that we put in our way, we are here figure out how to do them well, how to be strong and open hearted.
What is strength? Strength is mental and emotional strength, to not fall into despair or depression, to keep going, keep loving, stay in integrity. Keep an eye on the bigger picture, to have a good attitude.
Remember how our job here is to not add to the suffering, to remember that our job is to bring the miracle vibrations into the world, into our lives and the lives of the people around us. Our job is to bring the good vibrations and as long as we can tune into the sun the sky the rain flowers trees there will be a balm for suffering, something to soothe us.
Since time immemorial, across every culture on earth, people have turned to the inner worlds for healing, strength and clarity. The term “shamanic” as I use it refers to this universal phenomenon, not tied to a particular culture or tradition—a spiritual rather than a psychological system, based on the ability to step outside the modes of conventional thinking to authentically access altered states and hold space for healing to occur.
In this sense, pretty much every new age practitioner is doing shamanic work, whether they are a channel, a healer, a medium, a psychic, a card reader, a life coach, or anything else. This applies to most artists as well: musicians, poets, dancers, painters, and so on. And it applies to all forms of ritual and ceremony, prayer, invocation, mantras, and deity visualizations, whether Christian, Wiccan, Sufi, Hindu or Tibetan. They are all connecting to other levels of reality to bring back something of value. This is the essence of shamanism.
Where does the term “shaman” come from?
The term shaman or šaman comes to us from the Manchu-Tungus people of Siberia, and may have originated from the Evenki word šamán.
Although for many of us the term shaman suggests a medicine person of South American or Native American origin, this is technically inaccurate. The chart below, courtesy of Julia Penelope’s excellent article on 6 Reasons To Stop Using The Word Shaman, illustrates all the words she could find in 15 minutes from different languages that are frequently re-labeled under the aegis of shaman. In Latin America, for instance, the practice of spiritual healing is called curanderismo and the term for a traditional healer is curandero or curandera.
Why then do so many people associate the term “shaman” with South or Native American cultural practices?
The term “shaman” in Western circles was popularized by the anthropologists Mircea Eliade (Shamanism: Archaic techniques of Ecstasy, 1964), Michael Harner (The Way of the Shaman, 1980) , and Carlos Castaneda (The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge, 1968), with the wholly well-meaning intent to replace the term witch doctor or sorcerer with a term less loaded with a negative or demeaning connotation. These were the first Western academics to take a serious interest in indigenous mystical practices.
Both Michael Harner and Carlos Castaneda lived and studied with the Shuar (Jívaro) of Ecuador, and Harner went on to found the The Foundation for Shamanic Studies that offers a 3-year certification as a shamanic practitioner. A majority of modern practitioners of shamanic healing methods are connected to this school, hence the assumed connection of the term shaman with South America.
Mircea Eliade, who was first to defend the use of this term in a broader context, defines a shaman as follows:
he is believed to cure, like all doctors, and to perform miracles of the fakir type, like all magicians […] But beyond this, he is a psychopomp, and he may also be a priest, mystic, and poet.
If we define shamanism this way, Eliade claims, we find that the term covers a collection of phenomena that share a common and unique structure and history across the cultural spectrum.
What is core shamanism vs cultural shamanism vs neoshamanism?
In the spirit of Eliade’s views, Michael Harner coined the term core shamanism, in acknowledgement of the near universal phenomenon across numerous cultures, traditions, and religions, of healers, mystics, prophets, priests, musicians, artists, poets, etc. who have accessed altered states of consciousness, through a variety of techniques, in order to interact with the Spirit world and receive its gifts. Harner’s Foundation for Shamanic Studies aims to restore time-honored techniques to the Western world, to enable those of us raised outside of cultures that have preserved these practices to be able reconnect with our own internal spiritual resources. Hence, core shamanism focuses on universal techniques, most specifically drumming, and not on any specific cultural context in which they may be practiced. When I refer to my work as “shamanic” I am referring to this use of the term.
Cultural shamanism, by contrast, refers to the traditional ways of individual cultures. There is much to learn and unpack on the why and how of these masters of reality, who are as varied as they are alike. Nevertheless, those practicing cultural shamanism are often quick to criticize, with good reason, practitioners of core shamanism or neoshamanism who don traditional dress, and make use of sacred objects, without the proper initiations, and without a full understanding of their meaning and the depth of the culture they come from. In general, it is a good rule of thumb to approach the tradition in the way of the tradition, lest we wake a sleeping giant — in my view, the sacred should always be approached with the utmost respect! I am also personally extremely sensitive to implied or intended cultural appropriation, which is an important topic in the world today, and I am currently treading lightly, trying to find my way through this maze.
Neoshamanism refers to the immense popularity of drumming and entheogens (such as ayahuasca and peyote) among experience seekers and new age practitioners, along with other eclectic methods of achieving ecstatic trance states, healing, or visions. This can include a grab bag of necessarily watered-down practices (including vision quests, sweat lodges, ecstatic dancing, breathing techniques, fasting) catering to the spiritual tourist, that generally don’t have the power of when they are practiced within the full cultural context. For the cultural practitioner, these practices are frequently found to be offensive, the major criticisms being that neoshamanism 1) plays down the real dangers of interacting with the spirit world without the proper protections of an initiatory lineage and guidance of a master, 2) features a denial of the hardship of shamanic initiation and preparation, and the necessity of deep study to develop a keen understanding of the nature of the other worlds, and 3) most importantly, diverges from both cultural and core shamanism in that it is often focused on self gratification, whereas the true path of the shaman is that of service, to be a bridge between the worlds, going where most mortals fear to tread.
Are you a shaman?
A shaman, in the true sense, is a master healer, in the same vein as a guru or a saint. A self-professed shaman rarely is, and it is well understood that the highest spiritual initiates who walk between the worlds often do their work in secret and maintain a low profile.
Just as a guru or a saint, a shaman is recognized rather than certified. Hence, for those of us using the term in a descriptive sense for a particular style of healing, the correct term is shamanic practitioner.
The modern shamanic practitioner is a synthesis of knowledge derived across lifetimes and cultures. Ultimately, only one thing defines a shaman: whether you are called by Spirit or not. There is work to be done in this world, and when Spirit knocks, we answer.
If you’re interested in further unpacking what has been briefly touched upon on this website, the following is a short list of further resources for the serious seeker. The list is based on teachers/teachings that I have personally found to be profoundly authentic and useful in furthering my own understanding.
Depth Psychology and the works of Carl Jung, Joseph Campbell and James Hillman
Why UFOs by John Keel and John Mack’s Program for Extraordinary Experience Research (PEER) underscoring the universality of spiritual phenomena, from angels to aliens
We find stories of star-crossed lovers in myth and legend all over the world. It is clear that romantic love isn’t just a modern Hollywood invention to sell more movies. It is a motif that is deeply ingrained into our psyche.
These lovers and their stories have something to teach us and a deep wisdom to offer.
In the new age world, we hear a lot about the twin flame relationship. Some say these are souls that were once joined as one and are now split asunder — with the task to some day come back together in wholeness and union. Long ago, Plato described such souls and, more recently, so did Edgar Cayce.
Perhaps I don’t necessarily believe in the conjoined souls idea: I certainly do not believe we are half, or that we get just one shot at love. But I do believe in a special kind of soulmate, a mirror soul who incarnates to play a very special purpose in our lives — and that is accelerated growth and awakening. That is what I believe twin flames are.
The magic of romantic love
Love is a force like no other, an unleashing of power beyond your wildest imagination.
Amazing things can happen when you are in love! You are raised into such a level of bliss and possibility that things that have been bothering you for a long time can finally shift. Just imagine the giddiness and pure joy that being in love brings. The intense presence in every moment with the Beloved. The inability to think or breathe anything but the essence of the Lover. This is the ultimate expression of divine madness that can be experienced through the magical evocation of the “twin flame” or mirror in human form.
As blissful as it is in its purest cosmic form, it is also the most painful experience your ego will ever have. It goes deep into levels of your soul you have never before experienced. It unearths things you have buried so deep into your subconscious, you have no hope of uncovering them through any of the usual methods and practices.
We get a taste of its ultimate expression during the honeymoon of bliss. And then the obstacles appear that must be battled one by one, layer by layer, until there is nothing left but the pure bliss of love and devotion.
The mirror relationship promises nothing and demands everything. This is no ordinary encounter. It is the most profound depth of healing you can achieve while in physical form.
—–The following channeled section is energy encoded—–
Beloved, expand into your cosmic self to know the true meaning of human love
This is an initiation into the mysteries of what you call romantic love, the sort of all-consuming love that desires nothing more and nothing less than to merge completely into the beloved.
And so you can also imagine by the same token, it applies also to a soul’s longing for the divine and human relationship with God, the source of all truth joy peace wonder awe and magic.
The source of love and light, the heart opening, the crown opening, the opening of sight and vision, a portal to being cosmic, into becoming cosmic.
It is the transmutation of the kundalini energy, sexual energy, that deeply roots us into life and the transmutation and the raising of that energy into that which is transcendental, that which transcends life.
And this is the ultimate mystery of romantic love, which is the raising of the sexual awareness into the heart, it is the descent of the cosmic soul into the heart, it is the explosive meeting of these two energies in the heart, and then the expansion from the heart in waves into the entire energy field that expands, that pulsates outwards from it with waves of love, of healing, of transcendence.
It is a level of healing and transmutation of samskaras, a clearing of the energy field at the very deepest levels.
—–end of transmission—-–
Working with your triggers
Twin flames or mirror souls trigger one another at a level of pain, insecurity, and fear that reaches into the deepest childhood wounds, and uncovers every trauma from this life or any other. You will never feel more naked, stripped down to your very core. This is why it is near impossible for these lovers to stay together, or perhaps even get together. It may be too much for them to even be lovers as sex unleashes intense energies and cording of its own. Nonetheless, whatever they are, it is a strong bond and a role of immense significance.
This is not a toxic relationship, nor an abusive one, but it can feel disorienting and chaotic because it is an intense mirror shining all your hopes and fears back at you, in the form of the horror picture show that you appear to be when in the throes of the distorted circus mirror of your deepest self loathing.
This is why you run.
This is why you scream.
This is why you sob like there is no tomorrow.
And then when you are done feeling and releasing, you realize, your beloved never intended all the things you projected on to them. You recognize the depth of your delusion, the distortions you project on to your reality.
And they shift with you. As you heal yourself and raise your vibration, they heal and raise up as well. Your energies are perfectly and vulnerably matched and intertwined.
It is an incredible opportunity
A unique gift
But what will you do with it?
Will you heal?
Or will you be consumed by fear?
Will you hold on or let go?
Your guides and angels are standing by to help you. This relationship is divinely guided and gifted, and you will have all the support you need — just listen for it.
