Day 68 Stuffing Emotions or Using Emotions

There is a difference between stuffing your emotions and controlling your emotions. Stuffing means not recognizing them, not allowing yourself to express how you feel emotionally, feeling that by showing your emotions you are doing something wrong. I think that stuffing is not balance.

Emotions are tools like screwdrivers. The best use for them is to bring happiness joy and love to those around us and thereby attain these things for ourselves and also to propel your intentions forward into manifestation. Now if you hide all your screwdrivers, how can you use them to build that patio? So it is good to see your screwdrivers, to learn what they are, how they work, what they are for and how to use them properly. It takes a bit of practice to learn how to use a screwdriver properly. Sure you can throw it at a wall but that won't do much good. And that is what we do with our emotions. We throw them around and even at each other without realizing that they are actually tools!

Too many people walk through life these days with one driving thought, "how does this make me feel?" They let how they emotionally feel make all their decisions and judgments for them. That is like a baby crying for its bottle! We have so many other ways to determine our decisions and judgments for us. We have life experience, our own beliefs, our own goals and goodness to choose with. Emotions are just screwdrivers. It would be like saying, "what does my screwdriver tell me to do now". ! LOL!

If I gave a screwdriver to every person walking around being led by their emotions we would see everyone talking to a screwdriver constantly! LOL!

So yes, emotions are valuable, as tools! We should learn about them, experience them, learn to use them wisely. Emotions are also part of our sensory equipment. I use my emotions to alert me to negative or positive energetic fields. I have stood in "places of emergence" and just felt what I felt just to feel it. It taught me something more about that place than if I had stuffed my emotions and not used them in that place.

Emotions are tools. We can easily use them for our own good and the good of others. Why didn't anyone teach you this? Good question!

Aho  ( “I speak my truth”)

Shaman Elder Maggie

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Day 66 The Four Enemies of the Shaman Part 4: Old age

Each of us truly believes that we are somehow never going to die. We are somehow immortal. No one thinks about their death, no one thinks that maybe today is the last day on earth. But it could just be true that right now some Iranian who’s job it is to watch over the launch pad button for their nuclear missiles just bumped the fire button with his foot as he was getting up to go to the john and right now those nuclear missiles are headed straight for your country and will be here in less than ten minutes. We don’t know that this isn’t true, do we? So what are you doing believing that you will still be here tomorrow? Are you fooling yourself? Do I hear you saying, “ I am never going to die!!! I have all the time in the world! I can put this off till tomorrow. I can build my boat tomorrow. I have lots of time! Lets watch that TV show now! And the next one and the next one!” No I tell you that your time here is short . You do not have a lot of time to build this boat. In fact if you don’t have it built by the end of this course then you are not going with me to the other side. I say this to keep you from procrastinating.

Now there is another side of this enemy that says, “Oh you are too old to even begin to build a boat now! Why not just give up and go watch TV”. And there is a side to this enemy that says, “You are too tired to build your boat today, and today, and today, and today.” And there is a side to this enemy that makes sure you are just too busy to build your boat, too much going on, too many places to go, run the kids to activities, work overtime, make dinner go to scouts, etc, etc.  Am I saying that you might have to rearrange parts of your life to be able to build this boat? I sure am saying that! Just how hungry are you to reach that other shore?

You see this enemy is definitely here to keep you from walking  any closer to your spiritual freedom. This enemy is the worst one of all I think,. Every one here has felt the claws of this enemy already in these courses. It is so easy to succumb to this more powerful enemy, old age, tiredness and death.

But if you accept the gifts you receive in taking responsibility for balance in your life (Course 101, lesson two) and you act on the discipline of humor, your spiritual self can dance with joy at the fact that, in this moment, you CAN build your boat! You can work on you! You can give this moment to adding another plank or weaving another rope for your own journey to the land across the huge lake where Creator will reward you for your efforts.

Every shaman has to make this journey. It is not easy. It is called an initiation in some cultures, a test in some cultures, a blessing and gift in other cultures. But you must build this boat and sail it across this wide lake if you want to get to the place where Creator bestows shamanic gifts on those who are willing to dedicate themselves to this great work.

Old age/death is fought by having the discipline of humor and the responsibility for balance in your life.

There you are!

Aho

Shaman Elder Maggie

www.shamanelder.com

Day 41 What Causes Addictions?

I will give you what I find the answer this through working with people with addictions. We choose addictions because we are being controlled by outside forces and feel that we are no longer fully within our power. We want to be in control of ourselves. When we fully feel we are within our own power, we can live without addictions. But when we feel controlled by someone else, be that a spouse, a boss, a life situation, a norm given to us by society, well, from any place, we choose to smoke or drink or some other behavior that we do control, or at least feel we control. It is a bad way for us to regain some control over our own lives. No one is going to tell you that you can't have some coffee. You have freedom in coffee, you use it whenever you decide to use it, you have freedom of control over your coffee use, it is something you decide to do for yourself.

This might be a hard concept to grasp because it is quite hidden and we don’t like to look at control issues at all. And it seems like an addiction is not something you are controlling, and certainly not a good way to regain control over your own life. But that is what an addiction is. Sometimes as with alcohol, it is to escape from that outside control, to take control of yourself by drinking and hiding out from the control of others. It does not matter if one is really under the control of some outside force or not. It only matters if one feels as though he or she is under the control of some outside force.

Some people willingly give control away. They are not troubled by it. But some people feel robbed of themselves when under the control of outside forces. Their attempt to regain some kind of control over their own lives is to begin a habit that they fully control, often an addictive habit.

So are these people just an addictive personality type? I don't think so. These people are just more sensitive to their own sense of freedom and choose not to be controlled by outside forces. Yet they are controlled. How to break the habit? Find out what is controlling you and get away from it.

Aho

Shaman Elder Maggie www.shamanelder.com