Shamanism Soul Retrieval and Nature Mysticism

Shamanism - Soul Retrieval and Nature Mysticism

Dr Raven Dolick M.s.D.

Mar 26, 2016

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So you want to be a Shaman?

Then your journey starts today.

A journey that will be filled with strange and wondrous things, where your consciousness will start to shift and expand, and you will begin to see the world with different eyes. A world that abounds with an abundance of tiny elementals through many ranks of nature beings, to magnificent Angels, Ancestors, Celestials, Spirit Guides and Helpers, Shamanic Healers, Power Spirit Animals, and Ascended Masters, who will become your unseen helpers, healers and guides. You will explore unknown worlds and behold nature in ways you could never have imagined before, as you study and practice some of the ancient shamanic rituals of our ancestors who have lived harmoniously with their environment for thousands of years.

The first step in becoming a Shaman is to instill within you a deep reverence for Mother Earth, and with the Planet itself, and to know that you have now become her custodian. Once you can love and respect nature and all living things, you will be able to love and respect your fellow human being and understand the meaning of honoring and respecting another person’s space and culture.

Shamanism teaches you how to connect with those mysterious realms called the spirit world. This direct experience of the spiritual world and its unseen helpers, profoundly changes you, because it brings about the soul enhancing experience of becoming ‘God-aware’. It does not happen overnight, it is a gradual process of spiritual unfolding that takes places during different stages of your life, and Shamanism may be the final step in this process of God realisation giving you a vision of power and glory just waiting to be experienced. You will know that you have arrived when you experience an overriding, all-encompassing sense of joy that flows from you every time you connect with nature and the Supreme One. The experience is utterly life transforming as it carries with it the mantle of authentic initiation and provides you with knowledge about nature, the Universe as well as your place and role within it.

The key to experiencing a dramatic expansion of awareness is through a powerful connection with nature. ‘Nature mysticism’ helps you to step into a more advanced stage of spiritual enfoldment, one that brings you into direct connection with your immortal aspect of self (Higher Self).

Your ‘higher self’ is that aspect of your spiritual self, that ‘hovers above you’; who breathed a part of its seed of life into you, when you breathed your first breath. Your ‘Higher Self’ will embrace and reabsorb you back into its luminous self when you breathe your last breath and vacate the shell you call your body.

Once you establish connection with your Higher Self, this on-going contact allows you to achieve expanded states of awareness in which you can direct your consciousness away from everyday physical reality and into the inner worlds of the dreamtime while very much awake.

Yours is a great journey, and it could start with the simplest of initiations, as was the case of Malidoma Patrice Somé, in his book “The Healing Wisdom of Africa,” Published by Thorsons. ISBN No.0 7225 391 8

After spending fifteen years in Missionary Schools, Malidoma felt a strong sense of nostalgia and returned home to his village, only to find that he could no longer speak their language nor embrace their customs.

The elders of the village decided that it would help him to reintegrate back into the village, if he underwent one of the rituals appropriate to the boys of the village who were on the verge of puberty. This particular initiation process was physically excruciating. He was told to sit and look at a tree until its true nature was revealed. After fifteen years of education in French mission schools he found this idea completely absurd, and the whole experience was physically hideously uncomfortable. The temperature was a hundred and ten degrees; he was naked, sweating, hungry, sitting on hot gravel and covered with crawling ants, and to crown it all, he was being asked to pay no heed to the discomfort and to concentrate on the tree! A stupid exercise, he thought. Thirty hours later, he realised that there was only one thing he could do to end his ordeal. He could give up and stop the exercise right there, which would mean failing his initiation and the ability to reconnect with his people and be accepted as an adult, or he could find some way through.

Crying with shame and failure, he asked himself, what was wrong that he could not do what was asked of him? Through his tears, however, he continued to keep an eye on the tree and as he looked at it, he suddenly began speaking to it, as if it had a life of its own. He told it all about his discontent and sadness, initially pouring out his heart and then changing his tone of voice, began speaking more respectfully about his own emptiness and lack of insight. Suddenly, as his attitude changed, his perception changed. The tree was no longer there; in its place was a beautiful green lady. Where the tree had been, there was now, a figure in the shape of a woman, about seven and half feet tall, dressed in a silky black flowing garment with a veil over her face. She lifted her veil revealing an unearthly face. Malidoma called her the ‘Green Lady” because she was green, her skin was green, but this had nothing to do with the colour of her skin. In his words: “She was green from the inside out, as if her body were filled with green fluid. I do not know how I knew this, but this green was the expression of immeasurable love”.

As soon as she appeared, he felt some kind of magnetic pull towards her, and before he knew it, he was in her arms, and I quote again: “It was a homecoming of utmost healing. I was sobbing as I have never done before, for I felt that I was in the hands of the ultimate divine being, hands that provided the ultimate sense of acceptance and home that could ever be denied”.

He did not know how long he stayed there, but it felt like a long, long time, and he had no intention of letting go. Having finally experienced this overwhelming feeling of love, and support, he felt that all he now had to do was to live happily ever after. But all too soon, he realised that she was communicating that she had to go, as did he, which only made him hang on all the more tightly.

Then a strange thing happened, the softness changed back into the rugged hardness of a tree, which became more and more uncomfortable, and he found himself hugging a tree again, feeling saddened that such a powerful and loving being had changed back into a tree again.

As he stood there sobbing and holding the tree, he became aware of the comments of the elders who were watching him and heard one of them say, “They are always like this. First they resist and play dumb when there are lots of things waiting to be done, and then when it happens, they won’t let go either. Children are so full of contradictions. The very experience you rejected before with lies, you are now accepting with apology.”

The whole experience taught Malidoma that more things exist than what his Western education could explain, because the whole village witnessed what he had seen. Is it possible that trees are not inanimate objects, but rather living presences? In what way do we need to change if we showed a tree the same kind of respect that we usually reserve for our fellow human beings? Bearing this experience in mind, if one spends enough time alone in nature observing, the trees, mountains, rivers, waterfalls, valleys, rocks, flowers, all natural things, you soon start to realise that their spirit is much bigger than what can be seen; that the visible part of nature is not what it appears to be. There is so much more see than what is normally visible to ordinary sight.

Nature will reveal itself you to gradually, as you learn to shift your consciousness in order to come into contact with different aspects of the web of life. One way to do this is through journey work, which we will discuss in later chapters, and the other is through ritual and ceremony.

After his experience Malidoma could not bring himself to cut a living tree, because he never knew what he was cutting, what sort of spirit might live in the tree that he would be cutting? Every time he walked in nature, especially among trees, he had the feeling of the presence of spirits watching him, which was a very humbling experience.

Trees also have luminous energy fields. The larger and older the tree is, the more enormous its energy field. You can also imagine how many years of wisdom the Nature Spirit that lives there has accumulated as well. Never, never, just barge in and hug the tree!

Consider the tree has a living, ancient, ‘Keeper of Wisdom’, who has seen countless generations of people come and go. As you walk towards it, try to ‘sense’ where its energy field starts, by turning the palms of your hands outwards in front of you.

You may feel this as a slight tingling in the palms of your hands, a change in vibration, a slight tension, or a definite intuitive feeling of “Stop!”, when you come into contact with the tree’s auric field.

When this happens, pause and mentally, and with respect, ask the guardian of the tree, for permission to enter.

If you get a positive response, walk slowly forward, as if you are on ‘holy ground’ and try to sense the changes in vibration as you approach the Matriarch of the Forest.

When you get to the tree, sit down, with your back against the tree trunk, and relax completely.

Still your mind and relax your body and emotions, and blend your essence with that of the tree, so that the two of you become one breathing, living entity.

Stay seated quietly for as long as possible, observing your surroundings, becoming aware of the sap flowing through the trunk of the tree, into the branches, up and down the trunk into the roots. Do this for as long as you can, and heighten your intuition to observe what impressions come to mind.

When all sensations cease thank the Nature Spirit who is the Custodian of the Tree for sharing her space with you, and leave quietly, with a sense of reverence and respect.

This is the first step in developing a deep admiration for nature, the elements, trees and plants. They do not need words to communicate. They communicate telepathically, through your intuition and through Mother Earth’s emotional field.

It is more important to heal our relationship with nature first than trying to seek out extraordinary experiences that appear supernaturally powerful. As Malidoma says “Shedding our own tears of grief for the violence done to nature and for the alienation and losses we have experienced in our lives will open the doors to healing faster than will searching for little people who live in another dimension”.

Experiences such as the one that Malidoma had are few and far between. Naturally, if the other world were to reveal itself in its entirety on a daily basis, it would disrupt everything in our lives, creating more chaos than we could handle. So they are very careful not to intrude upon our daily lives, as there are laws that forbid them from interfering with the normal progress of human beings lest they alter the course of our destiny. The film ‘Avatar’ was an excellent example of this.

We are however, allowed to enlist their help, through the use of Ritual, in very specific place in a very specific manner, to restore balance to situations that need healing. Ritual has a very powerful effect on our subconscious, as it helps to rebuild us at the level of our cells, making us more receptive to the world of Spirit and it empowers us when we combine it with the four elements of nature. Ritual is another aspect of Shamanism that we will explore later on in this course.

We are living in a time when the planet’s health is in a precarious state due to human interference, and this is why more and more people are being drawn to re-discover shamanism. Everywhere is concerned with the health of the planet and in many species of inhabitants: animal, vegetable, mineral, and human, and that is why becoming aware of nature, in all its forms, is the first step to be taken when studying to become a shaman.

Assignment

Go out into nature and see how long you can sit in silence observing what goes on around you. If there is a large tree in the vicinity, even better. Make a note of the time you started and the time you finished. When you have finished your observations, type out in fine detail everything you observed and any sensations, or emotions experienced during this exercise.

Do you feel comfortable with the concept of working with the spirit world?

If so, describe your spirit helpers.

In what way do you communicate with them?

In what way do they communicate with you?

You are encouraged to post your comments to the blog created for this course or on the forum. The goal is to begin some meaningful dialogue with other ministers and to learn from the different exchanges.