There is an unflinching light that is being focused on the massive inequality and injustice in our world. It is illuminating the deep shadow work we are all doing as a collective. The shadow of racism is very old and runs through all our ancestral lineages.  We are steeped in it, have been steeped in it for centuries. But this light holds us all in in its embrace and is making us accountable to end the culture of killing, fear, hate and irreverence.

We stand in the light of our soul. But we look at the shadow.

We look at those times in our lives where we witnessed racism and intolerance and kept quiet. It is so prevalent in our society; chances are good we have also participated in racism and prejudice. We also see and accept that we may have unconscious bias.

Our most sacred work is to recognize the shadow within ourselves and own all parts of it. To become whole. To continue our journey into consciousness. We must also look for the gifts in owning our racism. That may make us feel uneasy. How can there be any gifts in it?

There is a gift in seeing that we cannot arbitrarily judge people as good or bad because its not so cut and dried. Not so black and white. And by recognizing that a generally kind person can get caught up in the collective social ills. And as we see just how pervasive it is as a collective shadow, our eyes open and we become conscious of any privilege we have due to the color of our skin. And due to our economic level. And where we live.

This shadow work activates compassion. We can’t help feeling compassion when we see suffering. Compassion for families and communities who fear they may never recover from the grief and PTSD because the murders keep happening again and again. And compassion for the murderers who were programmed by centuries of prejudice and the repression of the reverence for all life.

We become ever more conscious of racism around us. And we get to decide how we participate in the healing of it. If we feel called to take action to bring about the healing, then it is a spiritual act and we don’t need to worry about whether we are perpetuating duality or failing a Divine neutrality ascension test. We open our hearts to sacred activism.

Inner actions we could take:

Clearing ancestral wounds that may reside in us that were hundreds of years in the making.  Using shamanic journey, meditation, or journaling, we ask to be shown the seeds of racism in our lineage.  They may show as contracts, vows, imprinted belief systems, past life karma, or other issues. We then call on our team of helping spirits and healed ancestors to energetically tend to the issue. They will help us clear the contracts or unravel the imprints of old belief systems. This healing will travel throughout our lineage and will affect our ancestors as well as our descendants.

For most of us, our soul has had many other incarnations, being both the oppressed and the oppressor. A deep healing shamanic journey is to ask our team of guides to show us if there are any parts of our soul essence that got split off and lost from any past life trauma that needs to be returned to us now. If there are, they may facilitate their return right then or guide us to seek out a practitioner for help.

Another powerful journey is to ask our guides if we have inadvertently taken any soul essences from another. If they show us that we still have custody of any soul essences that are not ours, we ask our guides to return them to where they came from. Then we can seal the work with a ceremony symbolizing the returning.

We do forgiveness work for those we may have hurt, knowingly or unknowingly, with our words and actions. We can include forgiving ourselves as well. We can do this by using recapitulation, prayer, ceremony, or other methods our team of helping spirits may suggest.

Outer actions we could take:

If the color of our skin gives us privilege, we use it to be an ally.

We take to the street and stand in solidarity in vigils and protests for every person who is not in a place of safety because of their color, creed, or economic level.

We support businesses owned by blacks, indigenous, and people of color; and donate to social justice causes.

We call out intolerance and injustice when we see it.

We have courageous conversations explaining why we are focused on Black Lives Matter with people who contend that All Lives Matter.

We are decent and kind to one another no matter what the circumstances.

We have reverence for all life.

Social reform is part of the human consciousness crisis. It will not happen by itself. We need to do the work to make it happen.  These are just a few ideas of what we can do for ourselves, each other, and humankind. Even if we only do one small thing it effects the entire collective. Never doubt our power to make a positive shift in the world.

Recently I did a journey to connect with Gaia, the Deva of Earth, for a message about this time of pause and reset that we are in now.

It came as a lesson, as many journeys do, and it came with a sound and sensation.

WHOOMPH. As if she took her hand and pushed me right down into the dirt which absorbed me in an energetic embrace. It was heavy, sudden, serious. And enlivening.

She gave me the feeling of indigenous creation stories where First People were made from her mud and her breath gave them lifeforce.

She gave me the feeling of how she gifted me life in this body, and how when this life is done my body will be returned to her through the Elementals dancing away my form.

She spoke to me as one speaks to a child, and lovingly. She said that my blood is her blood, my bones are her bones. She came into my lungs with a sensation of what it really feels like to breathe, and a knowing that it is her breath as well.

WHOOMPH. This is what it really feels like to be in my body. 

She gave me the feeling of being part of the entire world, and that everything on the planet really is my kin. Not just all humans, animals and plants; but also buildings, dump trucks, computers, trash heaps, refrigerators, filing cabinets, plastic bags, sneakers, viruses, everything. I had sensory awareness of a cellular and heart energy connection to everything. It was like plugging into a current of reverence.

WHOOMPH. She says the time for complacency is over.

The great shift in humanity will come when the realization that we are of the earth becomes crystal clear to all our senses. And that we physically are kin and connected to all that is her. I keenly felt that connection as my body was surrounded by her body, and I could feel the energetic matrix of all things. Many indigenous people have not lost this feeling and are aware of it all the time. 

Everything we are and everything we have is of the earth. We can know this in our head, and we can feel the intuitive rightness of it, but it really does not sink in until we feel the sensation in our bodies, our cells, our energy systems. 

When we can feel and realize the sacred in all things at every moment, we will have shifted.

WHOOMPH. Thank you, Mother.

Gaia by Susan Seddon Boulet

In shamanic practice, it is common to work with ancestors from one’s lineage.  Our ancestors can be wise teachers and healers who pass on special skills and information to us and can help heal ancestral karma for the entire lineage.  It is also good practice to work with one’s descendants as well. They can provide information and teaching about how humanity got through difficult time periods. They also provide a window to what the possible future holds.

With the world at a major turning point right now, I felt called to do a journey to a descendant who could give me some insights about how we got through it.

My helping spirits led me where I needed to go, and we stepped into a yard next to a house. I do not remember the details of the building, but the surrounding land was full of colors. Green and gold grass swept over the hills behind the structure, the sky was deep blue with a few puffy clouds. An orchard next to the yard had many long rows of robust trees full of red and gold apples. A woman came walking from the orchard towards me carrying a big basket of apples. She was middle aged, tall with wavy graying hair. She was dressed in a woven fabric dress the color of olive green, with a slate blue and orange tunic or scarf covering her shoulders.

I told her who I was and what we were all going through in my time now, and that I had come to her for any advice or insights she could share.  She told me that she was in the year 2150. She and her husband and children lived on this regenerative farm. She said that there are still cities and technology, but around the cities and stretching out to the rural towns, there are farms and co-ops that regenerate the land and provide food for area communities. There is balance. All waste, broken or used up items are recycled into general building block materials for making new things. There are no power lines. The air felt clean and energized.  She took an apple from her basket and handed it to me and told me to plant the seeds.

I thanked her and went back to my garden in non-ordinary reality and planted the apple seeds. The nature spirits and deva of the tree helped it to grow quickly and flower full of exquisite blossoms. I felt clarity as I stood next to it.  It spoke. “The way we live during these times are seeds for the future. What future are you stepping into?”

For the past few months, I have been receiving reminders from my spirit teachers about being mindful of the seeds I plant. They are helping me to see that planting seeds is the beginning of choosing our timeline. Not all seeds sprout, which is a good thing. Seeds planted in fear, anger, hate are only going to propagate more of the same, and continue to keep us on a painful timeline, just like the one collective humanity has been on for thousands of years. When we plant seeds with mindfulness and intention, and nurture the sprouting with love and care, those new shoots guide us onto the path of the timeline we choose to be on now. It can be a very subtle thing. However, we have free will and we can choose to direct ourselves into a new timeline to a different outcome. A different Earth.

So I’ve been thinking, after the immediate quarantine is lifted, and businesses and schools reopen, how can we NOT go back to normal? How can we choose a new way of living where the earth and all life is treasured, respected and treated as if it is the Divine embodied?  What changes do we make in our intention, our way of thinking and lifestyles to guide our timeline to this new world we envision? If enough of us guide our timelines into a new paradigm, will that give birth to it sooner?

In your journeying practice, I encourage you to journey to meet a descendant. Not only can they be a source of information, but they may also become one of your guides and allies.

I also recommend that you to contemplate these two questions (journeying on them might be helpful as well):

“What is it that I want to do differently to not return back to “normal” after this?” 

“What seeds can I plant to help anchor that in my timeline.”

It is time to remember that each one of us has the power to change our worlds.