Day 34 What Makes Someone a Healer?

To be a healer means to first realize it within yourself. A good healer understands awareness. She is aware that we each are unique, that there is no right or wrong, but  rather a myriad of stars each with their own body or being. She respects these stars as being all that they are and treasures each one of them no matter how far away they are from her.

She is balanced physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually within herself and fosters the balance of others through her example. When she sees something out of balance she uses her own balance like a gyroscope to nurture balance in other things, be that nature or weather or seasons or plants or animals or people. She acts as a balancing force because she herself is balanced.

 He is aware of his own powers and connection to Creator and fosters that connection at every minute of his life. All good work comes from the inside out. And when he is a bright brilliant light within himself he shines that light for all to see and come and warm themselves in that healing light. In this he begins to heal the Universe!

As you become who you truly are, a unique beautiful star, your light will shine ever so brightly over all of us. Embrace the beauty of each star you see. There are no good stars and bad stars. No judgment is necessary. Just behold, embrace and heal with your love.

Aho

Shaman Elder Maggie

 To learn more visit www.shamanelder.com

Day 33 Drug Use is Not Shamanism

I do not use psychoactive plants in my practice to enter the spirit domain and I will tell you why.

Right now you can easily join a group of people and take a trek into the jungles of the Amazon to meet with indigenous shamans who will house you and feed you and let you try their hallucinogenic drug to supposedly connect with the spirit world. At great expense, time, money and physical discomfort you will indeed see visions and have a huge hallucination. But your vision will never be what those shamans experience. Why? Because they are from a different culture than you are. They have completely different beliefs and so, since beliefs create reality, their reality is different than yours, therefore what they see is different than what you see and their vision is different from your vision.

They actually know this! So they are not giving away any shamanic secrets or initiating you into their tribe or anything else of the sort. They are making money sharing a plant that is plentiful and they get lots of money and the guests honor them and treat them so special like holy men, well it is all great fun and enjoyable for them. And that is fine.

You will never see or experience what an indigenous shaman experiences with his holy plants. You do not believe what he believes. In our modern western culture we understand psychology, how the brain works mechanically, synapses and brain activity, we know about the left lobe and right lobe and treat depression and disease with modern methods. In our belief system as modern men we have no need for psychoactive drugs to be able to reach our Creator. Creator is not far away and only accessible through priestly ritual to us. These drugs are useless for that purpose to us. Sure you will have an hallucinogenic experience for sure! We know how these drugs interfere with the lobes of the brain and cause an increase in the firing of synapses to cause hallucinations, but to connect with the spirit world? Not for the white modern man, sorry.

I do not use nor recommend any use of drugs for this reason. Make sense?

Aho

Shaman Elder Maggie

www.shamanelder.com

Day 32 Looking for Spiritual Gifts

Did you ever notice how we are given gifts or blessings when some outside force thinks we are ready for them? I remember struggling so hard to learn the 5 spiritual languages. I wanted to learn them so bad and I kept asking and asking to be taught the languages and I could not. No one would come to my aid. It was like I was forbidden from this knowledge. No one would help me. But several years later when I had almost forgotten about it and had been pursuing other spiritual practices and working on being impeccable in other areas, suddenly I was given the gift of a spiritual language! It came out of the blue, wham! I was shocked and delighted and I asked why now and not way  back then, and the answer was that I was not ready way back then.

So this is how we sometimes learn spiritual things. When we are considered ready to learn them. Don't be concerned when you don't have a certain gift or knowledge. Just keep working on being the best you can be in every area. You will get your gift when you are impeccable enough to receive it and wise enough to use it correctly. That is just the way it is.

Ask me anything by sending an email to shaman@shamanelder.com

Aho

Shaman Elder Maggie

www.shamanelder.com

Day 31 Your Medicine Bag.

Every Shaman through time and space has carried some kind of medicine bag.  I have a very small leather pouch maybe one inch long and 1/2 inch wide on a leather thong strap that I wear around my neck under my clothes. You would have to look hard to see the leather necklace around my neck. No one has ever noticed it or asked about it because I don't show it off or draw attention to it. It is no one's business but mine. You could carry it in your pocket if you could not wear it. But I feel it should be close to your heart, to your essence.

Inside is my own personal medicine as well as medicines I am practiced in using. Select carefully and with guidance what you wear around your neck. You are responsible for each item in your medicine bag. You are charged with the duty to wear them respectfully, to honor their power and to use them only for healing yourself and others with their permission. You become the carrier of their power. That is a big responsibility.

Gather your items slowly. I have been gathering my medicine bag all my life. Right now I am going through a major transition so I have added a piece of moonstone to my medicine bag. You can look up moonstone if you want to know why I have added that.

Your medicine bag says everything about you, who you are, who you are as a healer, how you heal, how powerful you are, who your allies are, what your power is. It becomes a finger print of you, the shaman.

Your medicine bag contains all the power of the items in it. Those items are given to you, not selected by you. It is a holy thing.  It is medicine for you! I make custom medicine bags for people if you ever want me to make one for you. Just go to http://www.shamanelder.com/invitation.htm

Aho

Shaman Elder Maggie

www.shamanelder.com

Day 29: Nourishing Life

Here is a quote from an old Chinese book that might have been exactly what my Shaman ancestor told to that  Buddhist monk because this is what was taught to me.

"In everything pertaining to Nourishing Life, one should listen well but incorporate the essential, look wide but choose the best. One cannot rely on one's bias to a single practice. Moreover, the danger is that those who devote themselves to one of these practices trust only their discipline of choice. Those who are expert in breathing say that one can extend the number of years only through circulation of breath. Those who know the methods for bending and stretching [their body] say that one can avoid aging only through daoyin. Those who know the methods based on herbs and plants say that one can surpass any limit only through medicines and pills. When the path you walk does not bear fruit, it is because of biases like these.

Source: Baopu zi, chapter 6. Translation published in Fabrizio Pregadio, Great Clarity: Daoism and Alchemy in Medieval China, 134-35 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2006).

Aho

Shaman Elder Maggie

http://www.shamanelder.com/

Day 28 What A Hopi Healer Taught Me About Ceremony

I can tell you the true story a Hopi healer told me. He spent 7 days preparing for a ceremony. He fasted, he dried certain grasses and prepared certain potions. He made a special altar and really worked strenuously for 7 days to have everything perfect. On the morning of the 7th day he went out at sunrise and began his chanting and singing and prayers and doing all these actions and he went on and on for hours.

 

But he could not feel his connection with Creator! Here he had done all this work to please Creator and to call upon him and all the Spirits and he felt nothing. But he kept up with the ceremony for hours more and yet he could not feel that connection, that presence of the spirits.

It was getting dark now but he kept going, doing his ceremony over and over with great fervor but nothing.

Finally it was late at night. The whole thing had been a dismal failure. He felt like a failure as a healer. He put away his ceremonials and went to a tree in the forest. He sat down with his back against the tree in the moonlight and he wept bitterly for a long time and then he just cried out, "why didn't you listen to me?"

And he heard a voice say, "You were so full of yourself and your ceremony there was no room for ME to enter! Here by this tree you are doing the most beautiful ceremony and here I am!"

That is what I wish to teach you about ceremony. Ceremony is what you are doing in your heart. Any rituals or step by step instructions for this moon or that feast day or the other holiday might be just for show, not for Creator. The best ceremony is the one you make in your heart.

Aho!

Shaman Elder Maggie

For more go to www.shamanelder.com

Day 27 How to Manifest Your Intentions More Quickly

There are actually two things that determine the rate of manifestation. One is whether you have any unconscious blocks holding back what you want to manifest. They are usually non benefitting beliefs that you have had for a long time and aren't even aware that they are there anymore. So if you can find them and replace them with benefitting beliefs, things will be able to manifest more quickly.

Second is impeccability. The more impeccable you are with yourself, the faster things manifest. Impeccability means doing your very best each day, each hour, each minute. It does not mean being perfect. No human being is perfect. But getting straight with your life, doing what you need to do as best you can all the time, not being lazy, not procrastinating, being honest with yourself and others.

And you are definitely walking in this direction! So keep walking and working with beliefs. Some of my students are now finding that they are manifesting their wishes almost instantly. And to their dismay if their wish is for something bad, it manifests just as quickly as a wish for something good. Energy is energy and cares not what you decide to manifest. So the old slogan, be careful what you wish for, you just may get it, is so very true.

Watch your thoughts. Think deliberately. What you think is what will manifest quicker and quicker as you go along in this course.

Aho!

Shaman Elder Maggie

www.shamanelder.com for more!