Friday, October 14, 2011

My First Shamanistic Journey Experience Pt 1


"Hippie."
"Tree Hugger."
"Nature Boy."

Take your pick. At any point in my life, any of the above words would have been adequate to describe my personality.
You can blame my mother and you can bet she would be proud of the accusation.
My first conscious memory involves running around on the green grass in our front yard, picking dandelions and laughing wildly. I was five- perhaps younger. After that it would be the "nature walks" that my mother and I would go on. For some reason I want to say that we did it every sunday, but that could be me romanticizing.
The point is, my most important memories- the ones I am most fond of- involve me being immersed in nature.
A healthy love of the planet and all of its beauty was one of the most relevant and valuable things that I took with me from my childhood. My mother had always felt that way and she passed it on to me. Little did she know that I would take it so much further.
After rejecting christianity in my teenage years, I turned, as so many teens do, to Wicca. Looking back,  I realize now that it was more about me giving all the people whom I perceived as oppressing me a great big middle finger. I played with love spells and bindings with deadly accuracy and spent many years floundering through a series of terrible, short lived relationships as a result. I kept doing it because I could feel the power in the spellcasting and I kept getting what I was asking for. It took me some time to realize that while I was getting what I was asking for, it never took the form in which I envisioned. There was always something a little bit off.
I eventually stopped practicing in the first years of college because I got bored with it and the people I had called into my life weren't into it.

Fast forward from 2001 to 2009.
I had never lost my feel for nature and the beautiful things that the planet provides for us, or the feeling of that indefinable connection. After I got my degree in December of 2008, I felt a void. All the time that I had spent concentrating on my art projects was all the sudden free time. Eloy, my partner (of 7.5 years at the time of this article) had been spending a lot of time out of town for work and I needed something keep me busy.

So, as they say- Ask and you have already received it.
I was walking through a bookstore with a friend in early 2010. She had expressed a passing interest in Wicca. I thought- well, I have that experience so I can pass on some info to her. It will be fun. We went to the Metaphysical section in Half Price Books. I was planning on getting her "To Ride a Silver Broomstick" By Silver RavenWolf. It had been my favorite book when I had gone through "Phase One" as I have come to call it.
Little did I know that in the ten years that had passed, Ms Ravenwolf  had become quite the author. I found her book on Hedgewitchery and after reading the first few chapters that introduced me to quantum thinking- my life has never been the same.
I saw the book there on the shelf and in my memory now, the book stands out like it was glowing. I was drawn straight to it and I sincerely believe that it was Spirit telling me "YOU ARE HERE" as if I was looking at a map in a shopping mall.
It started me on a path that would take me from that book to studying Green Level Witchcraft (aoumiel is a wonderful source of information if you ever want to read her books) to Tarot, Reiki/Theta/Galactic Healing, Crystal therapy and beyond.

Studying all of these things I have always moved through them, searching for a common thread. A feeling of connection was definitely there but I could never find the concept that acted as the glue. A deeper sense of levity in all of these modalities was somehow alluding me and it was that lack of cohesiveness that didn't allow me to study any one to its full extent.
Past Lives, witchcraft, crystals, herbs, voodoo, Gaia Theory, Basic Metaphysics, Reiki, Healing, Divination, Tarot- I knew somehow that it was all connected, yet every time I reached for the idea, it would skirt just out of my reach and seemingly sit in front of me and taunt me.

Throughout my Master/Teacher Reiki training and working at psyschic fairs as a Tarot reader, I have met many people from many different walks of life. I was introduced recently to the practice of Shamanism, which is apparently the mother of all the practices that have lent themselves to witchcraft.
To put it in general terms, it is simply getting back in touch with the natural order of things and being aware of your connection to the universe through metaphysical dealings with nature.

I went to a Shamanistic Journey Meditation tonight.

To put it in not so general terms- Shamanism is my gamechanger.











Tuesday, October 4, 2011

Serendipitous Synchronicity

The definition of Serendipity is finding something you didn't expect to find or a "happy accident." The term Synchronicity means two or more things that develop seemingly unrelated to each other, and are unlikely to occur by chance, yet are observed to interact with each other in a meaningfully related way. Synchronicity was coined in the 1920's by Carl Gustav Jung, whom I need to look up because i keep seeing his name and hearing his quotes EVERWHERE. Which is exactly the phenomenon which brings me to write this blog post.

I sincerely believe that when you are on the path that you are supposed to be on, your "souls journey" if you will, everything falls into place like puzzle pieces clicking together. One thing leads you to another and you can use these things like sign posts along the way.
For instance, one of my "signposts" is the number 44.
Fours in general appeal to me simply because they seem to me to be a number that lends itself to equality. I don't know why I think that but I always have. 2+2=4 seems very soothing to me. Call me weird, you won't be the first, trust me....
So obviously the number 44 is twice the fun. I first noticed them in middle school when a friend pointed out that they were everywhere.
I started seeing them in license plates, street signs, advertisements, street addresses, phone numbers even odometers when I started driving.
44 started to become a familiar friend and the more I paid attention, the more I realized that good things seemed to happen to me when 44 was around.
I started using it as a guide. All of my good jobs have had a 44 in their address, phone number or company store number.
I had a job once as an ad/signage guy for world market and there were no 44s present. I really didn't like the job and I was beginning to question whether I should be there or not. Then I got promoted to Supervisor and I had a 44 in my alarm code. My job got better.

My point with all this talk is simply to say that Spirit is guiding us even today in this scientific, technological age.
We just have to be open to the guidance. By training our minds to take time out of the crazy hustle and bustle of each day we can get back to what really matters.
Take a walk in nature, sit and meditate for a while or just take some time out for YOU. Listen closely and see what happens.
It just might be a miracle.