This is one of the weekly seminars Shaman Elder Maggie presents to her students. It is intended for those who are taking her online course in traditional shamanism, open to all people everywhere. Visit www.shamanelder.com to enroll today.
we are going to talk about something that comes up for all shaman practitioners who take this course. in fact this comes up for everyone on a path
the guides already know who will be here
and who needs to hear what
their teachings are always wonderful for everybody
but sometimes there are some people here who really need the teaching in a special way
so has everyone been working to gain new perceptions?
Wonderful! and do you find that your awareness is increasing as you try to gain new perceptions?
it makes you much more aware doesn’t it!
they work hand in hand awareness and gaining new perceptions
well that is what we are going to talk about tonight
new awareness and new perceptions allow you to process many more things
new emotions are coming up right?
You have been experiencing an increase in your awareness in both a meditative state and in your waking state as well
Once we begin this life of awareness, because we have knowledge of how to do it, we find ourselves doing it both consciously and unconsciously.
This may help to explain the sometimes spacey feelings you discover when you are driving or doing tasks that don’t require much concentration.
ever feel that these days?
This state of awareness is coming to the surface in your waking life.
This is a good thing but we must be conscious of it and learn to use it as a tool wisely.
By using your awareness with intent you find yourself highly aware and looking as if in an overview at many things at the same time, being more efficient and able to use your wisdom more effectively.
You have been learning how to reach a deeper state of awareness, arrived at when one is able to perceive the energetic essence of every item.
this is what I taught you to do with exercise three in lesson one, yes?
how to perceive the many faces of each object
how to find the energy signature of objects
and this is what you have been practicing since you started this course continually
Sometimes however you may find that you have arrived at this state of awareness and yet it seems as if it has no purpose. You forget why you have arrived at this plateau.
Perhaps before you started your apprenticeship you were plagued by feelings of not belonging or physical illness.
During Apprenticeship 101 you become aware of spirits, totem animals greeting you at night and taking you to places you had never been before, teaching you the ways of the Shaman.
You learned to discipline yourself and live the life of the warrior, impeccably.
Now that you have gained more of this ability, you find yourself on a plateau.
The drive to understand the ways of the Shaman is perhaps finished and you don’t choose to think about it anymore.
You find yourself more congruent.
You travel back and forth between sleeping and waking worlds effortlessly on command.
But beware!
In complacency there will come great trials of self-doubt, negative thoughts and new fears creeping in.
You chose the path of the warrior and you must honor your choice.
If you are feeling fear of any kind, feeling overwhelmed by shamanism today, feeling overwhelmed by the changes in your life, start over again.
Go back to lesson one and begin again, week by week to hone your skills even better to become impeccable.
It is your own lack of impeccability that is causing you grief today.
It is not being the warrior you need to be when standing in what you now see as the forest.
You can’t stand in this forest without your bow and arrows.
You will be killed by that hungry mountain lion that will eat you for his own survival.
Do not forget that the wheels keep turning, You can move with the wheels or get ground up by them.
This is serious business. life changing business that you chose to learn
An apprentice is very lucky indeed to have an Elder Teacher. Write to me and I will answer.
I will help you hone your skills and become even more comfortable walking between worlds.
You only need to communicate. I am not going anywhere. Only you can walk away from me
I am not walking away from you here
Some of you have told me that things which used to work in your life no longer work as well.
I suggest that you follow your heart’s path.
Each of us has a way to walk which makes us feel whole and good and pure and holy.
We know which direction that is by our emotions.
Because you have chosen the path of the Shaman, you can only walk the path of your heart if you wish to be free and happy and fulfilled.
Remember that each road in life is just a road.
We all wind up on the other side of life.
But if the road you are walking on feels wrong, then stop walking on it.
You have chosen to be impeccable with yourself.
Walking the wrong road will now bother you because it is not an impeccable thing to do.
Knowing whether to stay on your road or to go to another requires wisdom, discernment, self-knowledge and honesty.
A warrior knows that at any minute he may die.
If you were to die tomorrow, what path would you like to be walking today?
Listen to your heart; test with your emotions.
Sometimes those who have chosen the way of the Shaman will stay on the wrong path.
Perhaps out of fear, perhaps to avoid change, perhaps to perpetuate a false sense of self that you have portrayed to others for a long time and do not wish to burst that bubble of misperception.
We are talking about the path of Shamanism here
Sometimes it is the drive to succeed even when in a no win situation.
We struggle and are determined to make a success out of situations that were never right in the first place.
ever try to do this?
I know I did in my younger years
The depression and exhaustion of being in the wrong place gathers a great dark cloud over our heads and we forget that the sun is shining if we just follow a different path over the next hill.
It takes impeccability to make the right decisions about what path you should travel on.
So you say, well I am not impeccable so I am unable to make a good decision.
I say to you, you are in charge of your reality.
If there were no one else who was real in your life, if everyone and everything were the figments of your imagination and the whole thing was just a storybook, what path would you take then?
The one you are on?
Think about it
its important
Your Shaman training has taught you to become one with everything.
You have learned how to honor nature and use her talents to benefit yourself and others.
You have been given the skills to find your heart’s path.
When you want answers to life’s questions you have been given the spirit guides to teach you the answers
You are not powerless but rather have been empowered to take on the path of your heart with ease and insight and wisdom, now more than ever before in your life! You have the tools!
More so than ever before in your whole life!
To find your heart’s path, look for what is easy.
Look for what flows like a river without effort.
But you need to have the awareness of a hunter to recognize this path.
I have tried so hard to teach you to be a hunter.
Go back into the course and study again with hunter skills in mind.
The path of heart is the path that is easy; it is the ancient Tao.
When you travel between worlds and use your dreaming body, your second attention as it were, finding the Tao, you know you are going in the right direction because you feel it as being effortless, you are not using any energy.
Everything seems to be happening of its own accord and you are floating down a lazy river watching things grow and blossom on the banks with all goodness and beauty.
Even if there is great strife and discord in the normal reality, you still feel as though you are in the eye of the storm in your heart.
There is a serene calmness there that sustains you.
In Taoism it is known as not doing or “wu wei”.
its being, not doing, its being in the now moment each moment
its being aware and balanced and perceiving isn’t it
Your heart’s path is fluid like water.
It flows wherever the banks separate and runs to the ocean.
The warrior on the heart’s path is like a flute that lets the wind make its own music.
You need the courage of a warrior but you need the abandon of an old person who is aware of this and seeks his true self before he dies.
Take the opportunity now or waste years being where you don’t belong.
At this point in your apprenticeship you don’t yet have the discipline to walk with freedom and you wonder if it is even possible to combine your dreaming body experiences with your “real” world life.
Is your true path only available when you are alone or isolated from the daily cares of society or only available with a shaman elder in tow?
I tell you that this “reality” is the same forest we have been hunting in.
It only looks different much like the difference between a photograph and a painting.
There is nothing outside of this moment. Everything you see physically is like chalk.
All realities, worlds, universes, experiences, feelings, fold and collapse in like a folding map layering one on top of another so close until it becomes one thing in entirety.
Here is the place you need to be right now.
It is from this spot that you need to grow.
The world in all its realities is meant to be the tool for learning.
Gaining new perceptions is how to find the tool
The heart’s path carries us into growing more rich and more beautiful, more wise and more deep.
And what better tools than this place we call home, than our friends and family as well as the tools that we now can use from dreamtime.
the work is done right here in this place you are in this moment.
here is where the growth takes place
It is the ultimate difficulty for me to be a Shaman without physical community.
In the old days the Shaman was honored and respected, was fed by the tribe, was clothed with the best shirts and shoes and blankets, was the honored guest at functions and spent all of his life doing his calling of healing.
. Oh how I wish for that life again!
Today I am isolated form my tribe, left alone in the busy streets of a foreign land, forced to find my own food and lodging at the suffering of my skills and even being rejected for the gifts of healing I bring.
I think that is why it has taken me so long to go public on the Internet and offer my teachings.
I know I am not accepted.
I know I am called a charlatan, a witch, a voodoo doctor and rejected out of hand for even suggesting that a Shaman Elder can teach and heal with more truth and sincerity, efficacy and gentleness than the traditional doctors of today.
Yet I am not allowed to practice openly in this place where I live.
I am indeed different from those around me.
I have a dreaming body that I use to see into the past and future, to find lost souls, to bring to wholeness those that have found themselves in pieces on the ground.
. I am no longer attached to those things that others value.
I cannot share my ideas and activities but with a select few.
My people are not here and the place I call home no longer exists.
I am then a wanderer, a bodhisattva in this land.
But I know that I am of value to anyone around me and it is my honor to offer healing and teaching to anyone who asks.
This is my heart’s path and my greatest joy is to bring joy and peace and wholeness to those around me.
Perhaps you too, feel this way.
Perhaps your apprenticeship has taken you far enough away from society’s paths to show you the way for you and yet you do not have the practice to walk it gracefully.
Perhaps you are torn between this reality and your dreaming body reality.
Perhaps you wish to throw away what you have learned here but yet it nags at you and bites your heels and will not leave you alone.
Would you have the power of truth really leave you alone?
Or would you stretch your wings out and choose to feel the power of the wind raising you up to the heights that you have always dreamed of but never dared approach.
I tell you now that you are safe.
You are meant to fly
Throw yourself into your hearts path with all of your strength and depend on your own love to see you through to success. You cannot fail except in not trying.
You are different now than when you began this course.
Accept that growth and see yourself in a different place.
Look around you from the eagle’s wings and see that it is you that have changed for the better.
Bring that change with you and watch all that you touch benefit from it like pouring water on a dry houseplant. Guaranteed!
Try this:
Look at the path you are walking on now
Picture your life as it is and your relationships as they are.
See your relationship with your family and your job and your leisure activities and all your responsibilities
Do they give you pleasure?
Does this view fill you with joy?
What parts don’t feel as good?
Where are you stuck?
What would you like to remove?
Is this the right place for you?
Imagine where you will be if you walk this path for another ten years. How does that feel?
What changes would have to be made for you to feel really great about this path?
Try this:
Imagine that you are 80 years old and all finished with your life.
Imagine You can see now how it will all wind up.
You can see as an old person what is really important.
Look at your present life with these eyes.
Who around you is preventing you from walking your heart’s path?
What changes could be made to allow you to walk in freedom?
What could you say to these people to be given the freedom to walk your heart’s path?
Imagine that you did have the courage to walk your heart’s path. Tell your journal the story of how you got there.
And write to me about these things so that as we walk your path through this forest this course together we can work on these things together. I am here to help you create the life you choose to create, not only to teach you this course! I am here for you in every way! Ask anyone who has come here for a student intensive. We worked on creating a beautiful life together, not just on practicing the skills of the Shaman! I hope each of you comes to do an intensive with me! It will change your life.
In closing:
Fear is the only thing that keeps you from walking your heart’s path.
And fear is a figment of the imagination.
Growing up, my family used fear to control me, manipulate me, and get me to believe their “truths”, basically to run my life.
I was taught very well the value of fear and I learned how to use it in my own life to keep myself within the status quo, to make myself a willing servant to others and to ignore my own heart’s path.
But I grew up and I realized this and I chose not to live like this anymore.
It is your choice
Don’t let fear hold you back.
Be a warrior. A good skilled hunter. Live.
I give thanks for each one of you!
you make it possible for me to be here
you have no idea how your course funds bring healing to thousands of people each year!
I hope you all come and visit
I am able to do so much here because of each of you helping me
you give me moccasins to walk the low roads and blanket to stay warm
you support me and allow me to do the work I can do
and I want each of you to be able to do this work as well after I am long gone
become the impeccable hunter, the warrior in your own right
I will hold your hand and walk with you until you can stand by me in this battlefield and we can be warriors together.
there are over 20 tools in this 101 course and more in the 201 course
have you found them and duste4d them off and practiced with each one until you are expert with them?
even one or two can change your life as you have seen!
thanks everyone for coming and listening so patiently to the message from the guides tonight.
Shaman Elder Maggie is a traditional indigenous Shaman practicing for over 50 years as her own family lineage has taught her Shamanism. She shares this wisdom with the world through an online course open to everyone. She offers unlimited correspondence with her students and customizes the course for each student. She teaches the path of traditional Shamanism that everyone can walk in their own lives today. There are over 20 tools in the course to heal oneself and others. Her mission is to keep traditional Shamanism alive as she was taught it by her own grandmother. Please visit www.shamanelder.com to sign up today. Free Consultations, free articles, free teachings and more.
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