The Divine Within
We are so much more than what we think we are. We are actually the universe, learning and experiencing itself. So often we look out, we look out towards what we perceive as the universe, when in reality we must all learn to look in, look within, because that is where we will find the answers. The answers to life are held within each one of us. We must learn to open the box, the lid to knowing, and without fear dare to dive into the unknown, which isn’t really the unknown but the forgotten knowledge of life and creation. We spend so much time facing the wrong direction, living in an illusion of the world being outside of us, when the reality is we are the world, we are the universe, the cosmos, and as we come together in unity, our vibrations will resonate and create an orchestra of sound; and that same unity, that same sound, will create something beautiful which will be reflected in or manifest in the physical world and our individual worlds.
Shamanic chants are used to invoke healing, but they are not used parrot fashion. They are not used like a magic stick. They are used with wisdom and knowledge, wisdom and power. They are used with faith in the power of language. As speaking or singing is formed by the stringing together of words to create sentences, and words create sound, and sound is created via vibration, then we can rest assured that no matter what cultural language the shaman chants in, the desired affect will be the same. You don’t have to understand what the shaman is doing in order to receive a healing. Your mind may not understand but your soul, your spirit, your inner being will be able to respond to the vibration of which the shaman chants. The understanding will be on a deeper level. Through singing, storytelling, chanting, through speaking and praying, shamans from around the world bring harmony and health. They bring balance and well-being into the lives of others. The vibrations and sounds of the rhythmical drum, the rhythm of the rattle and the voice of the shaman are all used as hypnotic tools that can either push the shaman to other worlds or push the client into other realms of consciousness.
Our language creates the world, whether we speak it, sing it or chant it. It is the responsibility of each and every one of us to create the world responsibly. When the shaman works with spirit, they do so responsibly and with integrity. Together, the shaman and spirit create the perfect symbiosis. The shaman’s symbiotic relationship to the universe or with the universe and all in it is linked to the power of sound, and through that sound comes the power to nurture, restore, heal and sustain. Why does the shaman or anyone else go to such extremes? Because of the inner love of not only humanity but of all of creation.
Love and compassion are fundamental elements of spiritual healing, whether you be a shaman, a healer, a Buddhist monk or even a priest; without love and compassion we have nothing. But this love and compassion does not stop here. It expands into other realms, into the spiritual realm where spirits abide. We rely on love and compassion from the spirit world in order to care about our needs, and desire to help us heal. Just like us, spirit is not obligated to love us and have compassion for us, it comes down to choice for us all, and that choice is dependent on how we have evolved and where we are on our spiritual journey. But what is compassion if it isn’t sympathy? The difference between sympathy, empathy and compassion is quite simple. When the shaman has sympathy for us, he or she feels for us; they can see that we are suffering, they feel somewhat sorry for us. When the shaman has empathy, he can actually feel our pain, he can feel our suffering not just see it. But neither of these require action on the shaman’s part. But compassion, compassion is much more active. Compassion is seeing the pain (sympathy), feeling the pain (empathy) and choosing to do something about the pain in order to lessen the affliction. It is fairly easy to show love and compassion to those whom you already love, but the test of a great shaman is to show love and compassion to those who they don’t naturally feel close too. The shaman may not particularly like the person who has come to him for treatment, but he must learn to put aside his feeling, he must learn to overcome that worldliness in order to be able to offer love and compassion.
Every shaman has gone through their own suffering. Just because they are called to be a shaman does not protect them from hurt, pain, grief, trauma, anxiety, depression, loss etc.; these are simply part of the learning of being human, these are the knowledge paths that shape us, buffet us, make us strong and shine the light of love. The pain we all suffer in life can do one of two things; it can destroy us or build us. The choice comes down to us. We must all choose to rise above the pain and be the best we can. The shaman stands in the gap for us all to help us overcome this pain. They themselves are said to have walked through their own gates of hell, dealt with their own demons, many of which may have been self-created, and once they have defeated all, they come out the other side, transformed by the fires of life, the creative force of chaos. Just like stars are born from chaos, so too are we born (if we allow it) into a greater version of ourselves, if we can love ourselves and treat ourselves with compassion. We must all face our own fears, deal with our own torment if we wish to grow and heal.
When the shaman truly touches your soul, communes with your spirit in a spirit of love and compassion, it is not unusual for the shaman to cry, for they are feeling your pain, sharing your grief, cradling your heart in their hands. Compassion is a beautiful gift if only we would choose to hold it and embrace it.
Here is a beautiful true story of love and compassion:
It was a few weeks before White Eagle was due to go aboard ship. She was engaged in normal daily activities when she experienced the vision. It was of herself standing at the back of a ship with an older gentleman. He was going on the ship to scatter the ashes of his late wife.
Several days into the cruise, having forgotten about the vision, she met an elderly gentleman wanting a massage. As his massage commenced, there was music playing softly in the background as the ship rolled gently back and forth. White Eagle poured a little oil into the palms of her hands and gently rubbed them together to warm the oil and release the aroma of the oils; she lay her hands gently upon his back and was suddenly struck with grief. She knew it wasn’t her grief. She knew it was his. With tears rolling down her cheeks for feeling his grief, she said to him, ‘What is all this grief?’ But before he had a chance to answer, she remembered the vision and said to him. ‘I know why you are here. Your wife has died and you are here to scatter her ashes.’ Needless to say, he swung his head around in disbelief, complete shock, and said, ‘How do you know that?’ White Eagle replied, ‘I had a vision of you before I came to the ship. I didn’t know what you looked like, but I knew why you were going to be here.’ By this time, the man was sobbing. He used to come on cruises with his wife, but now she had died he wasn’t going to come anymore. He wanted to come one last time in memory of her and scatter her ashes at sea. The turmoil leading up to him coming had made him leave the ashes at home, but what White Eagle felt to offer him was a simple ceremony at sunset that day; they would meet at the back of the ship and would offer a prayer and say farewell to her in order to assist him in letting her go. As he did not have the ashes, water was used to symbolize the ashes, the letting go, the returning too, where her spirit came from. The water represented the fluidity of life and love.
They met just before sunset. It was a beautiful evening, the sky was still blue, the orange from the sun was painting a beautiful picture on the horizon and they spent a few quiet minutes before they commenced. White Eagle said a few words and he said his goodbyes and with a few more words and a blessing, they poured the water overboard to release not only her but also his grief.
Later on that night, White Eagle spent several hours grieving, crying, sobbing, and although they were her tears, it was not her pain. It was the pain she had taken from him in order to bring some relief to him. She shared his grief so that he did not have to suffer alone. She took it upon herself to lighten his load. After she had released all the grief she was carrying she fell into a deep sleep where she could go through her own healing in the arms of Spirit. When she woke up, the grief was gone.
She saw him briefly the next morning as it was time to disembark. She had gone to look for him to ensure he was okay; they shared a few last words and she reminded him that he still had reasons to keep going, reasons to live. That was the last White Eagle ever saw or heard from him again.
Love and compassion requires action!
We can look once again to the Bible to see the non-judgemental attitude of Christ’s love and compassion to healing all people no matter what they had done. We can see that same loving intent, that same selfless attitude within Buddhism. It doesn’t matter from where we come, where we are going, what we believe; what matters is our intentions in life, which should be not only for the shaman but for all, and that is the intention to bring peace, calm and love, not harm. If we evolve our inner being to a place where we can offer love and not harm, the world will naturally be a different place.
The shaman reaches out to all. He does not choose who he will work with or heal depending on what they have done in life. He is not called as a judge but as a healer, knowing that even the most brutal murderer will be carrying the pain of what he has done, even if he is not aware of it. The shaman reaches out to all, knowing that no matter how bad the person may seem, they are still part of the circle of life, still part of the sacred hoop, and still a part of himself. We all make up humanity, and we are all responsible for what we do with our piece of it. It is this same connection that permits distant or absent healing to work, this same connectedness that permits remote healing to be affective. Love transcends all, if only we permit it too.
Without love and compassion, whether from a shaman or any other type of healer, healing is nothing more than a technique. It is bound to have some effect but not the all-encompassing effect it would have otherwise had on all levels if offered with the giver’s heart, good attitude, good intent and compassion.
The shaman’s love is not just for humanity but for the entire universe and it is this that drives him onwards and upwards, it is this same love that encourages him to always bring healing into his own life.
When we remember that we are all part of one, all part of the sacred hoop, all part of a greater consciousness, then we remember the inherent capacity that lies within, whether we acknowledge it or not, to affect another. Just as a stone thrown in water sends out ripples affecting water that is further away from the point of the stone’s entry, so too does that which we throw or place into the greater consciousness send out ripples affecting aspects of the greater consciousness that is further away from ourselves. We can see this as a fact. If you blow into the air, the air that is currently present, prior to your blowing, will be changed; it has to be, because the circumstances have changed. Your breath has influenced and moved what was already there. The air had no choice but to flow in the direction it was pushed. If the air was blowing towards your breath when you blew out, then your breath would have gone in a different direction because of the force of the air coming towards you; these are basic facts. This is simply how nature works, just like yin and yang, moving backwards and forwards, filling voids and creating change.
In the same way, we can expect prayer or distant or remote healing to do the same. We aren’t talking about controlling another. We aren’t talking about magic tricks. We are talking about basic energetic movement. Our prayers, our thoughts, our intent, our healing is the stone in the greater consciousness, being directed to one specific point. So I don’t have to be at the point I wish the stone to fall, I don’t have to get in a boat to paddle ten feet out to drop the stone. If I can throw it, I can throw it from the shore. Likewise, we don’t have to be with the client in order to send healing (just throw the stone).
For many, the shaman passively offers herself as a channel whilst spirit works through her, and I do believe this is sometimes the case. But I also believe that many times the spirit is working with the shaman, not just through them. In Reiki, yes, it is widely accepted that the Reiki practitioner or master is a channel – end of. Shamanic healing isn’t Reiki and doesn’t work in the same manner. Shamans rely on spirit to inform their work, but much of the work is done via the shaman, whether using drumming, journeying, extraction, soul retrieval, crystals etc. The work is still being applied via the shaman who is working with the spirit.
Prayer is considered a passive healing method, and although some groups pray fervently and with much authority, it is still considered passive with the supplicant asking for healing for the client and then leaving the outcome to God. Other healing practices can also be considered passive, but with much of shamanic healing it is much more active in its delivery, with the shaman taking a much more hands on approach.
Larry Dossey at dosseydossey.com speaks of one mind prooposing that:
“….consciousness is not confined to one’s individual body. An individual’s mind may affect not just his or her body, but the body of another person at a distance, even when that distant individual is unaware of the effort, illustrating the trans personal effects of mind which implies that there are no boundaries to consciousness, that it is infinite in space and time. If our minds are unbounded, then they must unite or come together at some level. This means that in some sense we are literally one. The implications of this unity are profound. If our minds are connected, then we can, and do, share any and all experiences. All the joys and sorrows of life can be mutual affairs. This means we are never alone, which relieves the twin burdens of loneliness and isolation, two major factors in illness.
Dr Ernest Holmes in his amazing book: The Science of Mind speaks extensively about Divine Limitless Potential and also talks about this same greater consciousness, this same one mind that we all engage in whether we recognize it or not. When we fail to understand our depth, our divinity, our greatness, we run the risk of creating much unnecessary harm to others. When we become enlightened beings, knowing what we are made of and knowing the creative power that lies within, albeit dormant in many of us, then we become the amazing, limitless, creative potential we were or are designed to be. How exciting!
We are The Quantum Warrior, The Master Architect of our life – Braveheart
