What Is
Shamanic Insight?
When you look at a campfire, you can see how the wood doesn’t just disappear. It turns into embers, filled with the heat of the fire but no longer producing flames. Just like embers, shamanic practitioners hold a direct connection to the fire of Spirit.
When you blow on an ember, nearby wood will catch fire and produce flames. When a shamanic practitioner receives the breath of Spirit, flames of understanding rise up. It’s as simple as that.
When we consult a shamanic practitioner, we cast our lot with the breath or wind of Spirit. We allow the practitioner’s soul to catch that wind. Although we can all grow wings so as to ride the columns and gusts of Spirit wind, it is at first best to go to one who has already grown and stretched his or her wings.
What Is
Shamanism? What Is Its Function?
Shamanism and shamanic practices are the oldest form of connection with Spirit or God, predating religions by thousands of years. All peoples the world over, on every continent, engaged in direct communion with Spirit.
Often, a single member would specialize in certain crafts, such as herbalism, healing rituals, trance, dance, and oracle. Today our tribes and clans have scattered and our numbers have grown enormously. So, shamanic connection and service are being offered to people in new ways.
As an ancient form of spiritual communion, shamanism worked to lead a family, clan, or tribe on the most life-affirming path, providing information on how to survive as well as how to gain the most out of life. Shamans interacted with nature, the most obvious expression of Spirit. Some modern-day counterparts often work with magik and spells. I prefer to leave the orchestration of the life experience in the capable hands of the Mystery, allowing Spirit to support and guide me without my interference.
In ancient days, people did not think of the shamanic reading of nature or interaction with nature as something odd or unnatural. People simply did such things. The answers they received were their map in this world, their way of navigating their walk on the Earth. Now, again, we have lost our way and must return to old ways in order to nurture our souls, even rediscover that we have them. Once we find our souls, we can walk in balance, we can feed our souls and not get lost so easily.
What Is a
Shamanic Journey?
To gain spiritual insight, a shamanic practitioner undertakes a voyage, a journey, to catch the wind of Spirit and ride it wherever it leads. The questioner simply comes along for the ride. No one but Spirit will know where that journey will lead. This is a journey of faith in a quest for truth — direct, immutable, and pure. Like a story, the journey unfolds. Many of the aspects of the metaphorical landscape, the naturalistic characters, and supernatural happenings are geared to speak directly to the questioner. Meaning comes from the heart and flows back to the heart. The shamanic practitioner merely provides the vessel for sharing the story and revealing its meaning.
When you work with a shamanic practitioner, the practitioner’s seasoning helps you gain deeper insight into what Spirit is wishing to communicate. Spirit always works with great care not to offer too much or too little truth at any one time. If a series of journey sessions is requested in order to get to the bottom of an issue or situation, the truth will be strung like beads, one after the other, so that piece by piece the questioner gains an understanding of the spiritual foundation and context from which the issue or situation sprang.
What Do Spirit
Helpers or Guides Do?
On a shamanic journey, practitioners always follow the lead of a Spirit Helper or Guide with whom they have worked for some time. Each Helper carries a special medicine that is superbly appropriate for whatever is brought forward as a point to focus on. At The Reiki Well, we work only with Helpers who have trained in service to the Highest Light of Spirit.
Fortunately all of us have Helpers (such as guardian angels, power animals, elders who went before) who have our highest interest in mind. They teach and guide us, knowing us better than we know ourselves. They lead the way to show us an infinite number of aspects to the Mystery of the universe — which includes our Earth and all its inhabitants as well as our own worlds, our solar system, our galaxy and beyond. Our Helpers can also show us aspects of the past and tendencies in the future. The future is not laid out coldly, but unfolds as each being contributes to this unfolding. However, there are tendencies, given how someone is moving on his or her path and given the flow of everything around us. Therefore, situations can change and the information provided by our Helpers will too.
Where the foundation of our connection with Spirit is concerned, this remains truthful and does not change. What our soul-spirit-self wishes to do here on Earth will essentially also remain the same. Our Spirit Helpers are primarily concerned with revealing this desire on the part of the questioner, not with nuts-and-bolts concerns, such as where is my missing dog, or will I be rich and famous. These last are the terrain of psychics, who work with a shorter line of sight and specialize in practicalities and sometimes soothsaying.
How Can
Shamanic Insight Help Me?
Shamanic insight is essential in retrieving parts of our soul that go missing when we experience trauma, are deprived of love in instances when love would naturally flow, or when we undergo abandonment or betrayal. Shamanic insight reveals the fundamental truth of a questioner’s situation in a frank but gentle way. Shamanic insight clears up confusion surrounding a decision or situation.
Shamanic insight is offered by the practitioner, who undertakes a journey on behalf of the client. Sessions are initiated by an interview via Zoom or over the phone. Afterward, the practitioner will journey on behalf of the client and then email the client a journey overview. A Zoom or phone follow-up is the last step in the process, allowing for questions and clarification. All shamanic work is customized to the client's needs.
Shamanic work focuses on the dynamics of a situation. Examples of situations are unexpected life changes, relationship issues — among family members, coworkers, even among the community at large. On a personal level, questioners can be helped to become whole again. Questioners can also be helped with important life and career decisions through guidance and insights that are rich, nurturing, and truthful.
COVID-19 has broken our world open. Grief is now global and no longer suffered in isolation. We are experiencing environmental cataclysm and economic upheaval together. We are experiencing societal inequity and disruption together. More and more of us will be caught in abrupt onslaughts on our selves, families, and communities. However, we should not forget that we are all experiencing these things together. Shamanic insight helps by moving grieving work to a larger plane, thereby providing reassurance and comfort as we as individuals try to cope. It offers clarity and possibilities for response.
Insight is provided directly in service to the Highest Light and is given in the questioner’s highest interest. This is information that you can’t find anywhere else, only directly from Spirit.
