Angry imps!

I like this discussion on the dark side of meditation and the issues that can occur. I view them of course not necessarily from a scientific or even scholastic perspective. I come to this discussion from personal experience ( which is king in my book) and a shamanic eye. It is necessary to have this discussion because these are real consequences of awakening a possible shaman without the lore/ guiding hand/ shamanic ethos and spirit contact. Meditation is not a practice of scientifically silencing the mind and it's voice, it is a conscious effort to connect yourself with the divine part of yourself and divinity as we are able to perceive and understand. This requires understanding of uncommon sense to be applied in a common sense world. Yes this is indeed a paradox, but if you are in the mirror's reflection, everything is backward, yet we still understand it.

 I agree with the Dalai Lama: you cannot have a Temple without a large library to support it. ( Library guides are also very much desired.) Libraries and library guides teach us that there are answers out there and if they are not direct answers, we are able to take the facts or read a pattern and bring it into focus to understand or at least come to terms with the strangenesses currently in play. Between libraries and meditation, shamans thrive; remove the libraries and the whole kit and caboodle is insanity in a crazy burlap bag of angry wet cats. Poor burlap bag. I believe that when you are centered within yourself while in meditation that what you have learned has the potential to become wisdom through right action.  I think we often forget that life is a mystery to experience not analyze.

I have had some very negative experiences in both meditation and trance. That does not make me unstable. It makes me pretty "normal." EEEEEKKKK When these disturbing things occur it is a cue for me not to run away, but to carefully inspect. I may be experiencing an angry shard of myself or even missing soul piece! That is not to be ignored or taken lightly in the shamanic world. ( it is also not red alert/ klaxon alarm/ panic button pushing event.) It could be causing illness, true indeed, even emotional disturbances. . . the good news is that you can fix it. In fact, when these things come up you are being invited to help heal the issue. Not just fix it; heal it, mend it, bring the tattered ends together for peace talks. These things, these dark frightening things that hide in our beings. . . they are us. And they want the same things we want: love and acceptance for who and what they are. Really it's like the soul shattered off and made all these little imp like shards and they come back to haunt us. The only truth we need to understand in these moments is this: It may be an imp, but it's my imp and I love it. Well loved imps are much better behaved than ignored, ostracized, and angry imps.

Thus the witch proverb:

Faithfully serve your imp, and S/He shall faithfully serve you.

Storyteller shamans

I have always thought that the telling of stories was one of the most important things for a strong society to bond into a people. Not the news, not documentaries, not the neighborhood gossip sort of stories, but the ones of legendary proportions. The ones where the villain looks to be larger than life and invincible, the heros reluctant to step to the plate, the magic hidden in plain sight. These are the stories that truly matter. They used to be told in the flickering light of a fire at night when the creatures of night stalked their shadows. The Shaman or storyteller would have everyone huddled around scarce to breathe for missing a nuance of tone as the story came to life. Sometimes the fire would help with a dramatic pop and shower of sparks. These were the days when tribes were small.

Our tribes are much larger now, but stories are still a major bonding thread through our cultures. It's not likely that we are going to huddle around a fire ( although that still sounds fun) but we all at one point find ourselves scrunched down in a movie theater chair or a sofa in our living room waiting to be told a story. When we really look at it the storyteller has to jump through many more sacred hoops to tell their tale, but the beginnings of the storytelling process remains the same. The storyteller turns inward and flies up into a realm of ethers that he or she has been invited into. Literally it is a new world with rules, heros and villains all of it's own.

Like the past, these stories link tribes of a culture together regardless of what part of the world the story travels. All who hear and love the story become kith and kin, welcomed into the world with a common understanding of humanity even if the language is different. These stories not only bind cultures together, they can act as a guide in the dark shadowed night of the soul. Often times when we are listening/ watching/ reading these stories, we end up empathizing with a specific character in the saga. During times of demon dancing it becomes helpful to look to these figures and those around them for wisdom and guidance while you dance your own shadow dance. The wisdom revealed may not be a direct application to your own motion, but rather a sudden flash of realization and inspiration. This is a true aspect of shamanism: the application of the shaman's vision to the realm we walk in whether it be a large outer world project or a personal quest.

Shamanism is not a dwindling practice, it is alive and well. It has evolved, shifted to suit the medium, the people, the largeness of the world's tribe. Maybe the traditional means and methods of training have been passed quietly around to certain keepers of these secrets, but lost they are not. There are those out there who continue the traditional practices in secret with a small group of people in clusters all over the world and sometimes in places most unexpected. Often times these Shamans, if you will, do not share their adventures believing them to be irrelevant to the outer world or useful to anyone but themselves. Sometimes what is revealed, the shaman feels should be kept secret for a time until it is the correct place in time to reveal the mystery for further unfolding. Sometimes the shaman never reveals the story because the battle is their personal dance.

Every once in a while, I fall upon a movie, book or painting that reveals to me that the art of the storytelling shaman is still alive and well. These people may not recognize what it is they are doing, but I do. If there is any doubt, ask the story teller this:" how real are your characters and their world to you?" Most of them will tell you something like this:" my characters talk to me and have a running commentary on my life." These storytellers may not have been trained in traditional manners or be keepers of traditional secrets, but they have tapped into something larger than themselves and come back with a legend to pass to their perceived tribe. Some of these modern legends have swayed the thinking and understanding of real people in this realm, possibly shifting this world in a very real manner. If that's not shamanism, I don't know what the hex is.

I believe society needs these story tellers to help make sense of our world and lives. I believe that these stories make us stronger as both a society and individual. Think carefully, who are your storyteller shamans? How have they affected your universe? What untold stories have you been invited to dance within and have you the courage to tell them?

Opening doors

 I know that I have missed out on all the hub bub with Pantheacon ( again.) I have deliberately tucked and rolled then slid into my own private thinking space for work of my own. I have one suggestion for those like Z who wish to hold a birth woman only ritual. Hold three rituals: birth women only, transgender only, mixed. End of story. Everyone gets what they want. There would be no one feeling left out, they would all have something that is their own.

Time has skipped by me this last 9 months without so much as the courtesy of a squeak as it did so. Moving into a new place has literally uprooted my patterns and shook my little sandbox around burying some things, exposing others. It's not like moving from one apartment to another where things sort of resume where they left off. There are new chores to dole out and do, there are future repairs that must be planned before a thing completely becomes an emergency, improvements to dream about, and a community to get to know. It was nice to slow down this week without being sick.

In the strangeness of my own private portal to faery, I delved into my own self and dug up some answers I was expecting to hear and some that took me completely off guard. I knew there were things I needed to pick back up since my thumb was injured. Being healed now, I am ready to pick those things up again: yoga and mudras. It is easy now to see how much of an effect mudras and yoga has had upon me. Settling into my mudra reminded me how much I missed it. There were things that I was able to note, the flow of energy as the mudra took effect was interesting. It was like someone had poured peppermint oil on all of my nerves following the path through my body as it was being activated. Each moment the mudra was held was like the electricity in my body was being elevated, like a dimmer switch being turned.

My dreamscape has been very active. Most of the characters there were familiar faces and beings I have worked with for quite some time. There was a new surprise. I found myself in front of a mirror with the Ice Maiden. She was giving me mirror scrying tips. Upon waking, I made a mad dash for my journal to write them down before they receded back into my dreaming mind. This experience lead to questions about the nature of mummification and its effects upon the energetic body. I don't remember being contacted by the Ice Maiden quite like this before. She has shown up in places like a daemon would in my past, but never has she actually shown up in my dreamscape and spoken the way she has. Did the fact that she was so well preserved have something to do with her reawakening upon being unearthed? Is there something about being preserved that allows your soul to hold a space in time, possibly to skip through generations to pass secrets of the ancient practices necessary to that Shaman Thread I spoke of earlier? Were the ancients oblivious to this or was this something they understood? While things in my life seem to make more sense there are new questions, some of them I may not have answers to until it is my turn to pass through the forbidden mysteries.

While the ritual I conducted on my own behalf has shown to be effective, they ( my guides) have added aspects to it: part two and part three are coming around soon. I can now see why my friends and guides were giving me vexing half answers before. I am understanding the necessity of certain events that were unpleasant for me. Sometimes while you are content to stay where you are, you are needed to perform a different task. That will require you to shift and give up certain things that interfere with the new things coming your way. You have to wait for the door to open before you can enter the threshold. And some doors are best not forced open.


I am feeling calm and peaceful today. It is a sensation I have not had in quite sometime and I have missed it. I have a feeling that mirror magics and lessons are in cue for me. Curiouser and curiouser.

The Shaman Thread

Many years ago I had a conversation with my father while picking up pizza at his favorite place about, of course, space faring and colonization and how my particular skills seemed to him, at the time, non essential. My response was simply how did he know that this was not an essential step of evolution before we could leave the planet? Frontiers, as exciting and new as they are, are also very dangerous because it IS new. ESP's seem like a very handy thing to have well developed to help you get a heads up about those dangers while out there.

This conversation was resurrected in the face of my feeling not so well and deciding that taking it easy with Netflix was a good idea. I settled on an oldie but goodie: Earth 2. If you have never watched this show and you are a SciFi fan, this is something that may interest you. I will try not to spoil the show for you. The premise of the show is that enclosure has become intolerable on the stations; there is a great need and desire to go planet side and live there.

There are particulars I really found interesting. Especially, the connection that forms between a couple of the characters with the planet and it's indigenous inhabitants. It becomes very clear that there is at the very least one shaman with them. This character is an accidental shaman, but he is a shaman none the less. One who has much to learn about the art and craft of what shamanism is.

The questions that rolled around in my mind while watching this show were: how do we preserve the shaman skills while on stations traveling the black oceans of the universe? How will those skills be needed and utilized before we decide to dive back into one of the deep wells of space? Will those skills be sharp enough to reconnect with a large living body and its inhabitants? Will we be wise enough to remember that planets cannot be tamed?

I have ideas that may answer a few of those questions. The obvious one being how do we preserve the shaman skills??? We teach them to those who wish to learn and show a proclivity either openly or secretly just like we have done here in this deep well of space. Station life will require that there be a green house of sorts. The techniques will be different for growing food, but there still needs to be someone who can hear the plant life and tend to it in a good way. This would be a good practice field for a shaman stuck on a station. There will also be a great need for alternative medicines since manufacturing meds may not be the best way to handle things on a station and certainly we cannot rely on planet side delivery of said things. We must learn to be independent. The face of healing will have to change and shamanistic skills will certainly be handy there. There is even now and here a great proclivity for some to connect with technology in near mystical manners. I believe we have started to call them technomages. Considering the fact that we will be depending on a large piece of technology while we float through space toward our next well, a couple of good technomages hanging about would certainly make me breathe easier. I would certainly like our flyboys/girls to have an uncanny sense of what is coming at them while they jockey around between stations and where ever else they need to go outside. Open space tends to be a bit unpredictable. Loads of things zipping about at mach 5 and other surprises I am sure.

Will those skills be sharp enough to reconnect with a planet???? I hope so. Another question remains. Will those skills be allowed to continue or will we face another persecution and devouring of a belief system based upon fear and the need to control the mass population? Will we grow up as a species and begin to recognize that we are all different colored threads in a very large tapestry creating the larger picture of who we are meant to be? If we don't, I'm not sure we will make it and if by some stroke of genius luck that we do, with an even larger stroke of such luck, maybe an accidental shaman will surface. Personally, I would like to skip the whole freak out what the heck kind of crazy have I gone? phase, but that's just me. It would be, in my opinion, prudent to preserve and nurture the Shaman Thread that runs through humanity.

Meditation, trance and shamanic experiences

I tend to relate my subject matter from a personal experience format and my opinions are formed from these experiences. So when I tell you these things, keep in mind that your experiences in meditation and so forth are not wrong should they differ. More likely, you have different modes of perception and if they work for you then that is perfect. I tend to be a very visual person. I see things while I am in meditation and trances with pretty good clarity even if I don't always understand at the time what it is I am looking at.

Meditation practices are highly encouraged for it's calming and sorting effect on the mind's operation. You can either walk through a formulated pattern or your can go zen and allow the chains of the mind to loosen. I really have no preference for one over the other. I suppose, it would be more dependent on what my goal is for the meditation. I use formulated patterns for either stress relief accompanied by mudras or pathworkings when I wish to explore a specific aspect of my mind's inner workings. Trances I tend to use for interactions with divinity or my spirit guides.

The story I am about to relate to you happened many years ago and has had a very formative effect on my personal life. It's what lead me to trances in the first place and later to the tradition I now call home.

I was working on a pathworking excercise I had been trying to work for a couple of weeks with little success, something always interfered and I was beginning to become frustrated. I decided that I was going to continue practicing this pathworking until I got what I came for: an experience that would lead me to my seat of wisdom. It started just as it usually had, over the hill through the forest and on to the water in a swan boat through the mist. I usually got hung up on the mist. For whatever reason, my mind was having trouble parting it.

This time on the rocking boat, the mist parted and an island with a tower keep was revealed. I landed on shore and walked in. I started to feel things more deeply, things became very crisp and clear as I walk up the stairs toward the top of the tower. If this hadn't been my first experience with pathworkings slipping into trance I would have realized that things had shifted, but this was a new experience and I had no point of reference on the cues. I did think it funny at the time that everything had suddenly become more real for the lack of a better term.

As I walked into this huge library with books, scrolls and sheaves of paper scattered about, I immediately felt a buzzing sensation in my body as I laid my eyes upon a hooded man working arduously over a hand written work. He noticed my approach immediately and pointed to a seat that popped out of nowhere. He asked me a series of questions about my path including why I was on it and simply nodded. I was trying to see his face, the voice sounded familiar, but the shadows hid the features of his face very well.

I could tell that he was looking at me. It wasn't uncomfortable, it felt like someone who knew me just trying to understand why I was walking the path the way I was instead of following convention. He caught me off guard with a final question: who am I? Before I could even rationalize the question the answer flew out of my mouth as if I had known it all along: you are my Father's father. He removed his hood and a face similar to my father's smiled out at me. It wasn't a huge toothy radiant smile. It was one of cool, logical pleasure full of reserve and quiet pride.

Later, I described this experience to my mother who in turn responded it sounded like something my Grandfather would do. You see, I only met my Grandfather as an infant. He had passed the veil when I was very young. I have no memories of him on this plane. I came to realize after my conversation with my mother that something very odd had happened: my pathworking had shifted into a trance somewhere along the way and my Grandfather had arranged to have this conversation with me. It is possible that he was curious as to why I had made the decisions I had made about my spirituality. He was a philosopher in this life so I may have caught his attention.

After this occurred, other strange things would happen and continue to happen. I would meet people and beings that no one else could see, but they were there as plainly as any other person. I would have entire conversations with them that I can remember verbatim. Most recently was at a Samhain ritual I officiated in Tuscon. There was woman there who I was talking with. She commented on how much she enjoyed the ritual and was thanking me for coming all the way from Phoenix to do this for them. Other words were exchanged and later while speaking to my mother about this person and her curious words she developed a vexed look on her face. I described the woman three times to her and it was no one she knew or had invited. . . this was a by invitation only event. I spoke to my dad about this woman and he didn't recognize her either. I can only concluded that this woman was another one of my shamanic experiences.

I do have to wonder what the other people were thinking while I was having this conversation with the disappearing woman. I wonder if they perceived me as we perceived Giaus Baltar while he had his conversations with 6. You see, Six had always been invisible to everyone but Baltar and he was always left in these awkward situations because of these conversations. That must have been awful strange to them, if any of them were paying attention. It's not like the room was very large much less empty, so someone had to have seen something.

There is no right or wrong way to meditate. There is no defined amount of recommended time. I've know someone who manages to squeeze in only 10 minutes a day with a house full of kids and it helps her tremendously. I generally wait until kids are tucked in for either bed or a nap. I can range from ten minutes to almost an hour depending on what is going on in my life at the time and what it is I am seeking. Meditation is a practice. Even if in the beginning you are rubbish at it. . . keep trying. Your efforts will pay off, even if you are not trying to work up to jumping the hedge.

For information on the effects of time go to this post: Energetic Effects of Time