• Uncategorized

    Truth, Healing, Balance and When to Let Go

    July 1, 2016 - By 

    Truth, Healing, Balance and When to Let Go

    Shamans, or spirit workers of different traditions, are healers, intercessors or just the crazy person that has the idea that will work.
    Truth is the foundation from which they work. Without Truth death and destruction follow them faster than a freight train while standing on a railroad crossing with the lights flashing.

    There are shaman that work with shadow and underworld, while others work with the over-world and light. There are Shaman that work with spirits on an earthly level.

    There are those that work for the Good of the Community, and others just for themselves.
    There are magic workers who work for their own selfish reason outside of the truth of the community and are parasites. This causes misery and eventually the world around them collapses. And they bring the world in collapsing around them. The effect sometimes is immediate, and for some it takes lifetimes.

    Many shaman work from their own intrinsic nature. Some are called to one affinity or another. Some are damaged to begin with and some choose to be that way.

    My path is balance. Many say balance and mean getting even, justice or retribution. I mean balance. It is dancing in a dynamic equilibrium assessing each and everything for the absolute truth of it in time with all other things.

    I know of shaman who are excellent at spirit integration/soul retrieval, other people who are exorcists, of big or little things. There are shaman or energy workers, who help with the energetic imbalances people have, and help working with blockages removing them or helping people to do the hard cathartic work of their causes so they will leave on their own accord.

    The work to help people heal with traumas or deep neuroses, to clear those energetic strongholds that attract negative entities, energies or other cases deal with various afflictions and psychosomatic outcomes of dissociative disorders, is a very touchy and difficult set of circumstances.
    Healing these issues, most people are attracted to the healers that can do them some good. A perfect good is hard to find, and the shaman or energy worker that is skilled to deal with the specific issues maybe more difficult. There are soul retrieval methodologies that may not necessarily retrieve spirit fragments, but do the personality or psyche reintegration that is necessary for those who have had parts of themselves sequestered or hidden from themselves. For Some the healing never fully takes place. Many rituals dance around the periphery of the truth of the trauma and how the person has dealt with. Some wounds, like Frodo said, never heal.

    There are spirit retrievals after removing an entity that had been possessing a person. Some times that piece is long gone. The person lives a half life.

    Many people walk their whole lives with neuroses or traumas so deep, that these aspects hive off, sometimes as poltergeists. Cognitive therapy or cathartic rituals can help with some acceptance and reintegration. Some people, they and their families will be haunted by it. Other people these aspects from traumas or neuroses hide in their bodies their whole lives. Some create a long term illness, usually an autoimmune disorder, others some sort of physical manifestation in a permanently affected portion of their body, a limp leg, a list, a set of nervous tics, or some organ malfunction. These require extra-ordinary healing.

    All of this healing requires accepting and coming to grips with the Truth, of what happened, and the choices one made with those experiences.

    One of the axioms of healing is “Do no Harm”. And in some healing, some, no pain no gain. The axiom of speaking, “is it kind?” I am not talking about the kind thing by letting a person find out the truth the hard way, which in actuality is excessively cruel. It only saves yourself from not taking the brunt the persons reaction. There are sometimes no matter what you do, say or miracles that you can pull out of a bag of tricks, you can not heal or save a person.

    Some people have recreated themselves, they have built a strength a resolve a character that made them better than what they were. The cause of the trauma that caused their spiritual disassociation, may just have precipitated what was necessary for them to evolve change and grow. Sometimes it manifests as a cancer, or some other incurable issue. Sometimes it is represented by some type of obsession of spirit or a place holding place for types of spirits. And you have to let it go, they have made themselves better, no matter how much they have and will suffer.

    I read a interesting book of Chinese Shamanism that describes spirit bodies that leave the soul and spirit vehicle. These spirit components are called the Hun and the Po. The Hun is related to heavenly or over-world spirit and the Po has its affinity with the underworld. When you travel to these planes/worlds there are particular natural characteristics of the spirits that are there. They fit the various understandings of afterlives heavens and hells and everything in between. Most people end up going into a planes that are a combination of overworld and underworld, rooted into a place that has a similar energy to the person and where human overworlds and underworlds intersect. Realms of ancestors are coherent ones connected to their progeny. The difference between human and natural based overworlds and underworlds or supernatural realms, is that the human realms tie into belief and or behavior and often reflect aspects of their religious beliefs. These realms also reflect the zeitgeist, Weltanschauung, the energy and behavior of a people, place and time. Natures supernatural realms are not clouded with the collective conscience of people. These mixed places tend to be staging areas before people move on.

    A person’s soul and spirit vehicle (that spirit that which is the immediate vehicle for the soul, regardless of all the other spirit/astral components. Inevitably without people, place or nature keeping all the spirit components together, they separate. The soul if it is attached to one or the other more strongly will go to each of their respective places. Sometimes one component is coherent enough without the other half and the soul. For example if you are traveling and you see aimless dead and they are usually attracted to a conveyance of some sort, or some place where that underworld component can be absorbed back into the world, that is an underworld. Not unlike the spirit train in the movie “Spirited Away”. Sometimes people end up being there  a long while because of their attachments. Similarly it is true for heavenly/over-world places. Heavenly spirit fragments that have no soul end up being like 2 dimensional NPC characters in a very rich bright world there those whose soul is there appear to be functioning in more than one place and or time.

    Okay why am I going into all this. Sometimes souls fragment. Most times finding those pieces are crucial to the development of a person, their spirituality and their ultimate evolution. This is where Shaman with soul retrieval expertise is necessary. And those who are psychological healers to deal with acceptance and the processing of those traumas. So the individual can let go of the negative attachments.

    There are sometimes, the nature of the fragment soul, spirit or both, serve no purpose to the person, their evolution or growth. It is like a cancer. IT is like the biblical aphorism, if thy right hand offendeth they cut it off. If there is a spiritual gift like grace/salvation or something similar it is designed to cut out these aspects from the self, and add alignments with god or the spiritual realms people choose. In real life, some have these negative aspects who have been so sequestered they turn into obsession, oppressive spirits processes, entities or things, often manifested as illnesses of various sorts. They will hang onto them with all of their might, or they are so intrinsically bound to them to this life, they can’t let it go. This is where I learned the miracle of a “reaper” There are many “Grim Reapers”, they are tied to places, people affinities and things. I met my first one.

    I had a girlfriend who had a lot of childhood trauma, and abuse that manifested itself is in a host of physical problems, Multiple personalities, and with horrid psychological counseling false memories. (This is where I find rape is such a heinous and violent crime that needs serious punishment and a society that treats as seriously as all the damage it does, even to the core of the soul.) Sometimes with bad work of regression therapists seeding wrong information to have people fabricate a false reality. Or sometimes people do it for themselves to compensate for the massive black hole of memory loss or loss of time, or gaps in personality, to survive. At this point the manufactured reality was cobbling a working methodology for her as a person. It was a fiction that was sorting out character traits, personality aspects, parts were healing and evolving, other were withering. These manufactured memory parts were helping her body survive longer while the hidden parts would have killed her. She wasn’t ready to leave and she needed to let go of parts of the psyche, soul, spirit and other stuff. She was a loving evolving but often times irascible, difficult individual. Decades ago, one of the personalities I ran into, who gave me some obnoxious grief. I blessed her/ cursed her to know nights of complete happiness. Decades later, I was responsible for just that. Some of these healing take inexplicable twists turns and crossing of fates. Sometimes you can not heal the person. And sometimes you can not extricate critters, demons or things from a person. They have to do it themselves. The hardest part is just to be there. Love them. Hold space for them. Ground them in reality. Love them more, Love them harder, and respect and hold sacred all that they are trying to become. What healing I could do was to help with pain. Nothing else worked. The reason was that this was matter of deeper core healing, and involved letting go of what wasn’t her anymore. There was an episode where she went to the hospital, and almost died. She lost her memory, parts of her personality that held memories of her abused past. Funny now, she was a born again virgin. That helped in the healing. She had other fixated aspects of personality that had to be let go. I had to stand strong, and just be what was real in my life. That had a hard eruption of personalities. That was a deep learning experience. It also helped drive a stronger spiritual ability to deal with other people’s reality beyond the focus on ones own. It helped to heal and process memories in a new way and start letting go of some of the fabricated realities. Her illnesses progressed, and I got the call to come to the hospital, and she passed before I got there. She wasn’t gone yet. Her Matron Goddess was there and a psycho-pomp/spirit guide. What was left was a residual green energy tying one last thing to her body in her heart. It was green energy what some would call residual energy. Some call it the Heart energy or spirit. I gently lifted it from her heart and it dissipated. She was free to go. Her spirit went to an over-world for a short while and I know that she has safely reincarnated into a loving family. Two nights later I was dream traveling. It was an underworld and it was a dark level of shambling shells of people. Those type of shells where a focus of work and drudgery which were let go and not owned by their makers and owners. I manifested a bus around me, and my drum and played, drawing these spirit shells onto the bus. My teacher was their watching. Then I manifested into a Mansion with this green suited Skeletor type of character who welcomed me into his abode.   White skin over a skeletal  head and frame in a nicely done albeit green suit.  Usually my alerts would be going off, but I got a sense that this was okay. He went back to his desk, held his hands over his head and their manifesting over his head was this very same type of green energy, to only let it rain down on him giving a resilience and youth to a skin now less taught over his skeletal head. He had this shared comrade of a vibe going on and said to me, “It is nice when you get a perk like this in this business”.   You had to be there to understand this odd bit of comradery.
    My girlfriend was free of the burdens that were holding her back.

    Since then I have noticed where this one person’s passing, the reapers associated with this person’s life was gently removing what was holding him back. I saw my mother in one staging realm.    After awhile she transitioned from this one realm she was at, then to a place where she was separating. The vision wouldn’t make sense unless you had all these other experiences. The horror of her neurotic behaviors were manifested, acknowledge, albeit in an emotionally hard way. I had to show up to be a catalyst for that last bit of transformation. And finally she had an over-world self that was paying respects to and seeing off one last shell of her former lover who probably had an aspect following me for decades.

    I have found that some aspects of soul are not meant to be reintegrated. For some people they have to be let go. I have seen treatable cancers become untreatable. I have seen the horrors of rape, trauma, war and abuse play this horrible hell on peoples lives and health.  Sometimes, it frees the soul that is the will and glory of an individual held sacredly by a healthy spirit letting the rest go. I have seen what it does to beings that don’t let it go. Oft times they manifest into creatures that are denizens of these hells, reflecting these torments, while they lose what is left of what was good. And when their is nothing left but this unbalanced shell, it only hopes for more unbalanced spiritual drama that people offer. Reapers for example had a fear and fascination with death. Definitely not a job I want. Some people have ancestral realms following their progeny.

    This letting go, is a grief cycle on a spiritual level while people are living and changing through various places in the afterlife.

    To do this you have to love people for who they are, who they are working to become. As a shaman that means a lot more.

    On a personal note, this lesson applies to life. I am watching my country tear itself apart. And it is only in the beginning. Again I will do whatever is loving, and the rest I am going to have to let go and watch it happen. I don’t know whether there will be enough country left over to survive and evolve, or it will crumble and be reabsorbed into the world and some new order after all the weeping wailing and gnashing of teeth have finished. Again, as a person I got to keep my morals and truths and survive. As a shaman, I need to hold space for those who want to create and hold sacred the idea, that community, that holds each other sacred, to evolve, grow and thrive. I can only hope I teach some to do it, and hopefully have a group to hold space for a community to grow. What is wise to keep and what to let go. That is a balance, and hard work.

  • BLOG

    In response to a lament of the loss of Elders

    April 26, 2016 - By 

    The Rantin Raven : This is why we can’t have nice things. “On Patheos: Agora”

    I saw Elders being pushed to the side over 25 years ago. And others going solitary.
    I see some elders being respected in some communities.
    It depends on the type of community and the personality of the groups of people drawn to each.
    People noted the various influxes of Pagan/Wiccans that have joined the community. Some may choose a good initiatory tradition and stick with it, respecting and Elder.
    Many that are taught a one true way ( and I have heard it called “The Wicca”) don’t leave room for those who see the basic Wiccan ritual format as a training mechanism. And those who take it as a religion versus those who pursue the magical spirituality of it.
    This country in the mainstream and many of those who have joined suffer from the mainstream discrimination of ageism. And like others have said join a movement that helps them justify their lifestyle without a true type of morality and ethics.
    And since the burgeoning of Wicca from the 60’s feminist empowerment era, and the 60’s in general, authority, organization and hope of respect of those of whom paved the way gets diminished when that attitude and culture is still present when they get “there” and represent that which was thrown out with the bath water.
    Couple this with the fact that there are parasites and sociopaths, both “so-called” leaders and coveners, that are bane to the Traditionalists or any serious seeker.
    I, a male from NY from  those Female only times and places, through having had my own experiences that simulate what an initiatory tradition could have provided but then I could not culturally fit, for one reason or another. I had to go solitary. It is only after decades, and going where reputable long standing elders show up, do I get any type of recognition. The true ” The Wicca” and those religious and make stuff up as they go, to stroke their ego types, (sociopaths that have their enablers attack you) do every thing they can to keep you out their section of the community. Then I watch what larger community re-fragment.
    When you see it coming, and people are conditioned to isolate themselves, sociopaths and narcissists take full advantage of that. Groups can’t get as big as they used to because of this influx and conditioning to respond to these types of people.
    I haven’t seen one group in 20 years that teaches meditation anymore. The last Elder (now Past- Lady Amethyst) that taught anything about energy, vibration, and the reason for ritual adherence. Nor have I seen anyone speak to building an astral framework and ritual space except for Thorn Coyle.
    I just listened to an Ifa traditionalists where the one Baba wanted to get people back to talk about the magical and spiritual work that the various paths of the Oriesha have versus the surface rituals and practices that people do. It is endemic to the spirituality of many traditions.
    And it is part of the mainstream culture. No one trusts anyone, no group, no leader and wouldn’t know who to trust, to say that is a leader and for these reasons. People don’t waste time to listen to reasons, history, or exercise their own brain and abilities to think it through for themselves. People follow what gives them those feels, with no idea what or where it comes from, or who is manipulating it and how.
    The Elders who try to teach any of these truly empowering things are shown the door with some sort of social kick in the pants.
    There are few,  who have good solid working traditions and people earnestly supporting them, If what you say is true makes you and yours rare of what and whom I know.
    Here is the by-word, community, and by that diversity and leadership. Who do you trust, and how do you cultivate leaders? A tribe has those and multiple societies with different religious and spiritual traditions, along with a warrior, women’s, men’s and other practical day in and day out societies. That is what my group is working on. And yes we get next to zero interest. They don’t see a value in it. They want to see what’s in it for them.
    And the Elders that say they are retiring from Wicca and going to more traditional witchcraft, being a witch, wizard, is the continuing study of self, lore and magical practices, and extending their relationship with the divine and nature, without being impeded by those who have made Wicca an altogether stultifying but small organized religion, managed by many, by many standards, who couldn’t earn a traditional third degree. Those who see the Gods and the spirits know.
    And nowadays, vampires, the added extra bonus of spiritual environment and sociopaths, do what I want versus in perfect love and trust. Every larger meetup or gathering I go to, I and my group have to protect people from them. Witch by definition is what you do for yourself. Wicca is a religion and a framework, for some these magical training traditions. Shamans learn to serve a tribe. No Tribe, no community, no reliance on wisdom of elders, but the self serving of each little group manipulating each other. Yes many of us have had to survive, recuperate from burnout, or just be a victim of abuse.

    Those of you have survived with a cadre of an honest tradition. I salute you.
    I have seen Elders from various traditions manage to work together for a time here and there. The underlying lack of structure, and that thing that is a hypocritical stone stuck in my throat, working by consensus, that develops only the most skilled of the emotional manipulating leaders, that drive the core founders and workers away, no there won’t be a coherent community honoring Elders.
    Again I am doing what I can to teach. Many are concerned with who I trained under, what traditions and how successful I’ve been without any context or understanding of what I know. The paucity of capable people who have had any adept experiences are few and the rest fake it, while flaunting a more marketable feel good group. People will get what they get.
    Now that I put myself out here, I expect to be hammered. Have at it.
    Most of those who have responded to this post what you say is true and good, and from your sets of experiences, I have seen also. I just hope the one thing in pagan communities are not interested in is community and leadership and culture is the very thing that they need. And now without any good culture to be based off of, one must be created to be a model not only for ourselves, but for the world.
    Archonstone

    peopleembrachingchange.com

  • Uncategorized

    Shaman, energy workers and Medicine people a Diversity that we need.

    April 23, 2016 - By 

    Traditional shaman, who deal with spirits initially, whether from the land and the culture or being so close to death, they are patterns of the same process. Getting accustom to each pattern and living it, takes a lot of personal energy. And it has costs. The ordeal by spirits whether by ancestors, planes or by being close to death, are by happenstances.
    Many medicine workers who are by definition not “shaman” either have talent and or go through ordeals, initiations or vision quests. This however has more of a natural, earth based and ancestral pattern that helps these people center themselves and serve their tribe and or people.

    The Shaman sickness pattern Identified in Siberia and the Asian steppes by some tribes are identified as “white” shamans. There are other shaman that learn by skill and talent and are called “black” shamans (nothing to do with light/dark, good/evil dichotomies, etc)

    Some witch, hoodoo or Voudou paths, speak of all magic and dealing with spirits have a cost. And it has a cost on the body. Personal energy that goes through the body that isn’t matched to a person’s body but spirits and places each have their unique patterns. If we were to fully accustom ourselves to that pattern would probably move completely there. And our bodies would have an even worse time. This is why many shape-shift on planes. This too can bring residual energies to manage by or alter people’s own natural.

    There are other techniques that can people can use not to be hurt by working with these people, places, entities and or things. There are some who are taught aspects in varying cultures.

    For those who have been called to these shaman sickness, madness or death paths, there are medicine people who help them if they want it. And sometimes they can’t be helped. And they work their own path and the energies, destinies and patterns that they are attached to. It is my hope that those weaves will honor them in this plane or the next and heal them and give them an equitable boost in their next life time or their time in between.

    In general, people moving people energy, or highly structured or dynamic energies through their bodies, that are usually not tuned to their bodies, does damage to their bodies. It takes a lot of energy to protect their soul and have a spirit body that maintain their soul in that dynamic equilibrium with body and life in general. This takes a lot of work and many don’t do that depth of work to be adequately prepared. This can be said not only of “shamans”, but of energy workers, healers, vampires, or energy players.
    DSM-IV that classify kundalini psychosis and chi-gong crisis, “a crisis of faith”, where practitioners who do this energy work on purpose but have worked it too hard with out the adequate time and experience to work through the psycho-spiritual-somatic experiences to attune their body and the energies together. The recommendations there follow what gurus and chi-gong teachers would say. Slow down, focus on health and balance, and deal with the after care of the attendant catharsis that occur when working these practices.

    Not all energy or spirit workers suffer illness or madness. The world may wish to impact individuals to that point, but it isn’t necessary. There are balance paths where many work on light or dark, over and under worlds, or ancestors, gods, or the dead. There are ways that mitigate these issues given cultural or traditional contexts, few who follow fully. Many don’t get a choice nor do they have the blessings to be received into same said communities, as few and far between they are. People do the best they can. That cost that people take, is a commitment, that will have repercussions over lifetimes and over many planes of existence. As I teach, I try to give people, newly on their paths and some who have been on a path or two, an insight to the choices and what is going on so they can have conscious control over the choice of their path. Understanding the path and choosing that path, is different than being thrust upon it. Also, how to mitigate and manage that choice. Sometimes there is nothing for it. It is what it is. And I try to support and give a level of understanding for them, if it is warranted.

    I have managed to be pretty healthy, regardless of the ordeals that I have been put through. And some have pushed me to the brink of sanity, illness and death. That isn’t to say I haven’t suffered. Each of us need to have a cadre of path walkers who can understand what we as an individual has gone through. Support, tips, and some times just a place to chew the fat, can help us have a perspective who we are and the sense of purpose of our place in the universe. This is a rare and very healing thing for likes of each of us. Too often we are busy justifying what we are versus seeing the others in the diversity of we can be together. This is a rare thing that must be cherished.

    Cherish each other. In the mix there is a balance, usually.