Call yourself a Shaman (…?)

I don’t. At least, not any longer, and it’s about time I got away from playing that old record for myself, stop living as if my past is still here, and Be the future self I Am.

Don’t get me wrong; I highly respect shamanism as a truly profound and miraculous healing art.  After all, I’ve been a traditional shaman in more than one past life and uphold tenets familiar to the practice in my present incarnation as well.

For instance, I continue to have a deep-level awareness of and respect for how Spirit interacts and communicates to us through animal messengers (and innumerable other manifestations) in this lifedream we perceive as our physical ‘reality’. I communicate healing messages by accessing unseen realms. And through connection to Source /Spirit /God /whatever-you-want-to-call-it, I energetically facilitate multi-level healing. But ‘shaman’ doesn’t describe ‘me’ (at least, not any more).

For lack of knowing how else to identify myself, I’d gone (along) with what other people were identifying me as, based on what they perceived I was ‘doing’ in my healing mission. And it made sense, in that the success of some of the methods I employ – like soul-retrieval or mitigating the influence of unseen spirits – are often attributed to the shamanic tradition. As providence would have it, I’d taken the proverbial ‘easy’ route; one that I thought would by association provide people an accessible recognition of how I might best help them.

In truth, though, I want to make sure I’m not doing the worthy practice of shamanism, myself, or You a disservice. While I’d rather not use another label at all, I’ve been inspired to refer to myself as a "lifedream illuminator". While I believe it invokes a more apt description, it doesn’t just describe what I do; it’s what (rather than ‘who’) I Am.

So, what does it mean to be a ‘lifedream illuminator’?

Spirit is suggesting that a better first question might be ‘why’, as in ‘why would I /someone /you refer to yourself as one?’

As awareness of it in this dimension goes, part of ‘Being’ involves a letting go of or ‘moving away from’. While shamanism is indeed enjoying a revived appreciation world over, many people who’ve been taught to fear it as something (how to put it?...) ‘untoward’ will continue to be frightened of it, and miss out on the help on offer to them.

On the perceived other end of the spectrum (to all intents and purposes), persons that could benefit from healing but whose channels get scrambled by the mention of words they’re inclined to associate with religious doctrine  (like ‘Saints’, ‘Father’, ‘Jesus’, ‘Krishna’ or what-have-you) will either disregard what’s on offer to them outright, or perhaps worse yet, hold it in ‘too’ high a regard. What’s the danger in that? It’s been my experience that certain spirit-beings take advantage of ‘adoration’ energies, in much the same way as others feed off ‘negative’ or fearful ones.

In other words, I believe Spirit’s motivation here is one of ‘accessibility’; making Heart-centred healing available to persons who won’t access it through other modalities as they’re presented. In other words, why should anyone miss out? If you’d like to enlist the assistance of Loving, helper energies to bring more Light into your thoughts and your life, you’re not alone. We’re all here to help you be who you’re truly meant to be.

If you’re looking for a shaman specifically, doing a search online will bring up names like Sandra Ingerman, Michael Harner, Nicholas Breeze Wood, and a host of others highly qualified in the art. There are many I could whole-heartedly recommend.

But since you’ve found yourself here, consider that it's where you’re ‘supposed’ to be, and contact me to find out what enlisting the help of a lifedream illuminator can be of benefit to you, personally. blackfeathermedicine@gmail.com

Or if you feel an authentic call towards recognising yourself as a lifedream illuminator, consider this an invitation from the Universe to do so – you have at least as much a right to the moniker as I do. I advise though, that it’s not a trademark or to be used as a marketing gimmick any more than is the word ‘shaman’.

Big Love,

Black Feather

Who's Holding the Reins?

You don’t beat yourself up over things all of your own accord. You wouldn’t wrack yourself with guilt, feel anguish, confusion or remorse, despair, doubtfulness, hopelessness or (blah, blah, blah, blah) all on your own either. You have help. We all do. We have our dark angels for that. And yes, I did just say ‘our’.

Taking a larger view, the world is a bit of a mess, and they’ve helped us get it there. While it seems that they’ve robbed us of our ability to live our lives joyfully and lovingly, they’re actually helping to facilitate it.

Have you noticed that breakthrough follows breakdown, expansion follows restriction, etc? Who hasn't questioned – if there is a God – why S/He would allow ‘bad’ things to happen in the world?

Imagine for a moment being ‘The’ original creator (or call yourself an ‘aspect’ of, or ‘intrinsically connected to’, if you’re more comfortable with that). You’ve broken up aspects of your supreme, omni-Consciousness into infinite little bits of yourself and separated them (‘Not’) from awareness of each other, as a means of expressing the ever-expanding nature that is your creation: Love, of which you are part-and-parcel.

For your creation to ever-expand, you ‘pave the way’ (as it were). For all intents and purposes, you can picture this as your Creation expanding itself into the black nothingness of space. From the blackness, shapes start to differentiate. The blackness becomes individual shadows. For the fact that you are the Source of Love, you could say that these individual (darknesses) are beings that are ‘not Love’. Without them, Love doesn’t get a space to ‘Be’. With them, well, as it follows.

We’re at a point in human evolution where we’ve been under the influence of beings of ‘not Love’, but (I believe) they’ve been helping in the ever-expansion of Loving Creation. There’s no judgement necessary; you could say that they’re just a ‘first differentiation’. They make what we are – as Source – more evident.

Do you ever have those moments of unparalleled lucidity where you realise, ‘Hey, I’m not diminished by externals; I’m not a slave to whatever happens to me from the outside’? Do you notice those moments happening more and more often?

There’ve been dark angels taking advantage of our energies for thousands of years now, but as Source, it’s ‘we’ who actually hold the reins. They wouldn’t exist at all, were it not for the ever-expanding nature of the creative process that is Love. And in truth, they’re becoming aware of that.

Be kinder to yourself. Realise what you are. You’re paving the way, and you’ve got quite the machine to do it with.

Sure, it’s a lot more complicated than that, but it doesn’t have to be.

Is your life crashing, or is it that you’re flying for the first time?

There’s some kind of disconnect between the Lion you’ve got inside you and what you feel will (energetically) work in the ‘outside’ world. There’s no point in presenting yourself as a leader with anything other than something that is ‘soul-level you’. It’s obvious to me that you’ve got strength, you’ve got courage, but how to connect you to it …? Don’t worry; I won’t make this sound any more ‘new age-y’ than it has to be! gol (‘giggle’ out loud)…

Okay, well, maybe it is going to sound a little ‘woo-woo’, and right from the start, too! I was on a very brief shamanic earthwalk this morning, and while my guidance suggested that it was on behalf of a specific client I was working on, I believe it’s also relevant to ‘us’ as a whole.

In case you’re unfamiliar, to give you some idea of what a shamanic earthwalk is, there are a couple of examples of what might happen on one in this post: http://blackfeathermedicine.blogspot.pt/2011/09/octopus-medicine-do-you-realize-how-big.html

Basically, you could relate to what I mean if you ever consult oracle cards or the tarot. How is it that we can pick a deck up, randomly shuffle, and yet we manage to either pick the exact card(s) we need, or they drop right out of the deck for us?! Long story short, this apparently solid physical existence we’re experiencing is actually an energetic one that we perceive as having (material) limitations. In truth, our Überverse energetically and physically orients itself into exactly what we need for the growth of our soul /spirit. For the fact that cards get oriented in this seemingly ‘magical’ way, what’s to say that the same doesn’t happen with other elements of the lifedream we live? Answer: it does.

Moving on…

While ordinarily, shamanic earthwalks are much longer and more ‘involved’ (I have to say I’m relieved that this one wasn’t, in comparison!), there were (only) three significant signs that showed up in it. The first sign was the black flight feather of a crow.

The way I’d describe the Crow totem’s ‘main’ medicine is by saying that Crow is the keeper of Sacred Law. If you can imagine the difference, it’s related more to what Spirit /God /Source /whatever-you-want-to-call-it holds as ‘right and wrong’ than to what hu’man’kind does. In other words, because the Divine Masculine has been so dysfunctionally perverted for the majority of our known (or at least, ‘talked about’) history, the ‘laws’ our civilized societies have fashioned – some even ‘in the name of God’ – haven’t exactly reflected a ‘for the sake of Love’ agenda. In truth, they’ve been fashioned for the sake of taxing our (monetary and) energetic bodies for the benefit of other energetic beings that have been taking advantage us as a species. I’d include links to information about those beings, but that might be too large a scope for this post. I will say, though, that in psychic illustrations I do for people, they sometimes show up as ‘Sharks’, I believe that’s because they (used to) think of themselves as being at the top of the energetic food chain.

That said, their influence has made it much harder to get to our own individual, soul-level Truths. After all, we’re a species geared for acceptance and approval, and how do you gain that approval if you’re not involved in playing the same game the rest of society has been unconsciously coerced into playing?

For the fact that this was a ‘dropped’ flight feather, it’s a sign that the reign of these other energetic beings is over, or at the very least, coming to its end. The ‘problem’ now is, though, what to do with our new feathers, this newfound freedom that we have? It’s not like we’re exactly ‘used’ to it, after all. Part of what’s been happening as these beings are leaving is the collapse of our financial systems. For the fact that we’ve based our ways of living (and gaining approval, among other things) on that, how to come to terms with that, and what potentials are available to us /you now?

The second sign that presented was stuck upright in the gravel road I was walking on. Firstly, features of the road itself are significant. From a *dream dictionary I sometimes reference, gravel is “…a sign to walk cautiously and take each step mindfully. You may be feeling as if you are on unsteady ground”. On a more positive note, though, gravel is also road-building material. To all intents and purposes, that’s what’s happening here – while it might appear there’s destruction taking place in your life, consider that a new path is here being ‘made’ for you. A lot could still be said about the fact that this was an old road that’d once been used to extract forest resources, but hey, I’d be here all day if I got started on that as well!

But I haven’t quite gotten to that second sign I mentioned yet, have I? I noticed a little, very black shape sticking up on its end out of the road just ahead of us. Before I got up to it, I’d thought it was a piece of flint. Actually, the word ‘schist’ came readily to mind. Unfortunately, I don’t remember my way-back-when college geology course well enough to consider the symbolism! Ha! I do know that it’s a metamorphic rock, though, which would indicate something formed under a lot of pressure. Thinking about it as flint though (which as I said it wasn’t, but I’ll get to that), would make it a ‘point of ignition’, so to speak (~ a description of what’s happening in our lives at the present time). What it actually was was a piece of rubber, symbolizing “…[your willingness to] allow emotional upsets to bounce right off you. Perhaps this dream is showing you that you will bounce back quickly from an upset and become your buoyant and flexible [self?, or ‘new’ self]”. Don’t worry, as I say, it was not a metamorphic rock, meaning that while it can sometimes feel as though we’re stuck in a certain spot or a moment in time forever, the prophecy here is: your situation won’t take ‘geological’ time to change!

I tried consulting my  guidance to further clarify what this second sign of the piece of rubber ‘means’, and was presented with a message to convey about the importance of NOT compromising yourself, regardless of how confusing things might appear in your lifedream at the moment. As when you set out on a journey from any new crossroads, there’s bound to be a moment of confusion. Do you go back the way you came, because that’s a way you ‘know’? Standing where you are now, the first next best thing to do is to plainly acknowledge that you’re confused, and ask yourself a couple of questions. Try this one on, for example: “What is it you’d be trying to gain by ignoring your own personal truth?” Or put another way, “What would you choose as your own path, were you not worried about anyone else’s approval or ‘influence’?” Once you’ve got that sussed, take a step forward.

The third sign was just a very short distance down the road from there (which can be read as: a very short distance down the road from ‘here’). There was a little, tattered piece of blue nylon ‘netting’ protruding out of the road.

So, what the heck does that mean? Blue signs often appear on shamanic earthwalks that I undertake. I can be in the middle of some no-man’s land, and still be pretty much guaranteed to happen across a piece of azure or cobalt or aquamarine something. It’s incredibly fitting, in the fact that while the signs that present can seem incredibly obscure from the outset, they provide – as the colour symbolizes – “…clarity, peacefulness and truth” (…and I’ll remind you that I said it’s just ‘a short ways down the road’, another confirmation of change coming quickly).

The fact that the object was a net references the energetic net that’s been cast over us for so long by this alien influence (yes, I did say ‘alien’ influence). For the fact that this net is indeed in ‘tatters’, though, we’re coming to realise that we can be in more conscious control of our own energetic capabilities. That’s not to say that we fully know it or what to do with them, having gotten used to being ‘flightless’ for as long as we have been. Rather than being competitive or individualistic now, we /you have an opportunity and the freedom to be ‘participatory’ instead, to participate in your own life, to participate in a Universe which you could not even imagine being better.

Earlier in the walk, I’d pulled on the second sign – the piece of rubber that I’d thought was rock – and it hadn’t come out of the ground. For the fact that 99% of the little square was sticking out of the road, it didn’t seem to make any sense at all that I was unable to dislodge it. On the return trip, though, I’d tried it again and it just came right out! Is it any surprise that the sword ‘Excalibur’ comes to mind?

So, what’s the ‘opportunity’ for you now? It’s to live without reacting to your life in an ‘established’ way, to engage with the character that is You underneath that and act spontaneously. Open your Heart to your questions, and respond from it as well. Live your life as a mystery to be lived; not as a business to be managed.

Be gentle with yourself, and recognize your own authenticity. I can wholeheartedly say (from the benefit of personal experience), there’s no better choice of direction to take than the one that’s essential-ly yours!

Big Medicine Love to You

~ Black Feather

(*Quotations in italics were taken from “I Had The Strangest Dream: the Dreamer’s Dictionary for the 21^st Century” by Kelly Sullivan-Walden.)