Sky Yeager
Shamanic Practitioner - Usui Reiki Master - MariEL Reiki Medicine
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Shamanism is the path of the visionary mystic. We need to see what is happening around us with clear objectivity, both in our ordinary reality and in non-ordinary reality, as well as the Otherworld realms where we journey. But we also need to see what the outcome can be, something that might not yet have form in the outer world. That takes imagination. I did not fully understand this when I first started on my shamanic path. I was focused on getting information accurately, so that I knew I was truly engaging with Spirit and Spirit helpers. I was afraid of making things up, and so I kept trying to compartmentalize my imagination and I pushed it to the side. My first shamanic teacher saw that and tried to discourage that practice. She needed to teach me the value of using my imagination, so she took me through an exercise. I was to close my eyes and imagine what my life would look like if I could do and be absolutely anything without any limitations at all. Well, that was hard for me. At first I did not know how that would look. The ‘anything” was so overwhelming all I could see was nothing. I decided to start with something simple. I tried to imagine myself sitting on a boat in the tropical sun surrounded by clear azure water and jumping dolphins. Then a thought surfaced with “You’ll get seasick”. Ah, interesting. I tried many different scenarios. I found that I either had a hard time unplugging myself from my current life circumstances or that I would not be able to see around the laws of physics of how something would be achieved, like removing every bit of plastic from the oceans. My brain kept cycling into perceived limitations. This was such a valuable and sobering lesson that I never forgot it. I remembered being a very imaginative person when I was younger, always day-dreaming and creating stories in my head. I don’t know what happened, or exactly when I began losing that skill. Maybe it just fell out of use in my practical adulting life, or was overshadowed by mainstream collective cynicism, but I realized that I had to retrain my brain to imagine again. And I found the key is to do it regularly, like any other physical exercise. It is the foundation of manifestation. We cannot manifest something if we can’t imagine what we want. We need to be able to use our imagination in shamanic practice to create the outcomes that we want for ourselves and our clients. In every healing modality, for it to be effective, we need to see the situation, ourselves or our client as perfect, as whole and healthy. I wrote more in depth about this subject previously, which you can find here. How imagination presents itself is different for everybody. Even though the word visionary implies seeing, when we fully engage our imagination we use all our senses. Some people see things in their minds eye, for others it may be a full body feeling. We all have unique ways of using imagination, but the more we use it the stronger it becomes. If we feel our imaginative skills have atrophied, we can start small, with what we know. It might be a memory of a pet or object we had as a child, or the thought of our garden in our backyard. We bring in all the senses and re-create not only the vision, but the texture under our fingers, the smells, the emotions, the energetic connections between us and it. And when the limiting thoughts come up, we kindly, gently, receive the lesson and imagine our way around them. The insights gained in the process are valuable. And we might even end up creating the life we really want to live. 
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We love nature, and we value the time we spend hiking, camping, gardening, walking in the park. It is understandable that we want to surround ourselves with bits of beauty that remind us of that love, that feeling we have when we are walking in the forest, watching waves at the beach. Humans are used to taking whatever we want from the natural world. We have been doing that since we evolved on the planet, relying on nature and nature beings to provide us food, shelter, clothing, protection, comfort, peace. That concept has been turned into the modern approach of managing “Natural Resources”. Our economic systems have de-personalized nature from a being to a commodity, and that is the culture a lot of us were raised in so we generally don’t know another view. Many of us grew up picking wildflower bouquets for our moms and putting beautiful pebbles in our pockets, gathering wild berries and firewood while camping. We may have been completely ignorant that we were interacting with nature beings. As we progressed down our spiritual path, sometimes we may have said some words of gratitude or offered a strand of hair as a thank you, but many times we may have been too distracted or hurried to really connect properly. And then, how many times did we ask permission before we acted? Many people don’t even think about it, after all it is not a common part of most modern cultures today. That is something we learn as we explore and expand our spiritual path. There are probably plenty of times when we are conscious, and we do think to ask the stone if it wants to come with us and then we respect its answer. And when we are new to this sort of thing, it can be challenging to know what the answer is! We do the best we can with the tools we have at the time. Navigating this asking and honoring the answer is part of our commitment to partnership with nature beings. I love to spend time at the beach, especially on the Oregon coast. I have found so many beautiful shells and stones there over the years, I have them scattered all over my house and office and garden area. And most of them I probably didn't ask for permission before I took them out of their environment. But as my commitment with working with nature beings has deepened over the years I realized that asking was a necessary part of this partnership. So now if I do find a beautiful stone or shell that's in my path, or that calls my attention, I will ask “Would you like to come home with me? Or are you just saying hello and you would like to stay here?” I usually get an answer, and if I am not sure of the answer, I leave it there. I find that this process has reduced the number of items that actually come home with me. By acknowledging them and having brief conversation with them, I don’t need to bring them physically home. Knowing them where they are on their own journey, shining their vibrant colors, and rolling with the tide gives me the same enjoyment as looking at them on my desk or windowsill. I have found that when I connect with the devas and the nature beings of a place and do not look for anything to take home with me, a beautiful gift will sometimes be given to me anyway. Especially when I offer something from my heart freely like joy and asking if I may connect with the spirits of the place. Then it is a gift from the heart and it means so much more. And sometimes the gift is not a thing. Several times I have been amazed to see an eagle or hawk fly by me, and sometimes it’s as sweet and intimate as a butterfly landing on my arm for a few minutes. That connection fills me with gratitude for a long time. It is also polite to ask permission when using a space in nature for a gathering or for a ceremony. Just because we think it’s a good idea doesn’t necessarily mean nature is automatically agreeable. My friend Gayle and I both had the same calling to go to the coast and offer a ceremony to Mama Ocean by creating a mandala. We asked permission from the nature spirits of the place, and we got an agreement for the ceremony. We brought flowers and herbs and used them and the driftwood, stones, feathers and shells at the tidal line to create an image of a vesica piscis, two circles overlapping in the middle. We felt like this sacred geometry image represented the transition Gaia is going though, and that it might ease the ascension pains experienced by any of her beings.  We played crystal and metal bowls and sang and were immersed in the joy of creation. We were there right before high tide so we could watch the tide gather up our blessing and take it out to sea. The tide only came up and kissed the edge of it while we were there. So we left it to radiate and be received in her own perfect timing. On the way back I stumbled over a good size mottled stone with unusual markings. I picked it up and saw it was the most beautiful agate. It felt like a gift, and so I asked if it wanted to come with me. It did, and now here it is inspiring this story as part of its journey. Sometimes I wonder….what if foresters had to ask every tree if it was willing to give itself as a gift before they cut it down? If builders had to ask the land before they built a house on it? If we asked every plant in the garden if we could harvest it? How different would the world be?  Beach gifts
At this very moment, we are aligning with a myriad of cycles going on in perpetual perfection. Wheels within wheels. A day has its cycle of bringing in and letting go, beginning and ending, as does a breath, a life. In our culture so many cycles are built by the framework of time and tasks. We consciously align ourselves with these cycles in our lives, but we are also unconsciously part of an infinite number of them happening within and around us all the time. We are superficially aware of seasons on a large scale as we see changes in the land and in the holiday section of the stores, but we are unaware of all the cycles within that season. Each plant, insect, animal, bird, microbe, eco-region, elemental has its own cycle that interacts with others in the perfection of nature. We are clueless about them, but as we all are part of the same environment, we are affected by them in unknowable ways. Human beings have been paying attention to cycles for a long time. In the Druid and Wiccan traditions that I am part of, we keep track of the seasonal cycles with ceremonies and rituals throughout the wheel of the year. We connect our ceremonies today with those that our ancestors have been doing for thousands of years. The ceremonies reflect observation and enmeshment of ourselves in the cycles of the natural world around us, and our reverence for the innate wisdom and life force of the Divine Spirit in all things. In Wiccan traditions it is common to do rituals of letting go and banishing during waning moon cycles. Then the new moon acts a doorway to new beginnings, so at that time it is common to focus on and ritually charge our intentions. As the moon waxes it adds support to the manifestation and growth of those intentions. We want to work with and be supported by cycles, but not feel constrained by them. We also need to honor the flow of our individual rhythms and will. If we feel like it is a good day to clear clutter, or clean out our closet and donate clothes we no longer wear, we don’t need to wait for the new moon or waxing moon for that! We can always bring in the new and always let go of what is no longer serving us with every breath, every circular thought pattern, every dawn of a new day. One reason I love astrology is that it is all about cycles. Every planet moves in its own steady orbit through the constellations, which also move in their measured celestial ages over thousands of years. Some of these influences are so long we may not realize their effect at all, they are just part of the background energy of the cosmos. But if we tune into them with intuition and intention we find ways to evoke their powerful wisdom within us. The moon phases are just one example of a cycle that people use not only for ritual and intention, but also for tracking tides, menstrual cycles and fertility, guiding planting and harvesting, just to name a few. I was studying archaeology in college many years ago and I was quite intrigued by a picture in our textbook of a bone with the moon cycle incised on it. It was dated around 34,000 years old and found in Europe, presumably from the paleolithic Aurignacian culture. I wondered about the person who made it and why they recorded it on a portable object. I look at my new 2022 moon cycle calendar and I feel a connection to that ancient human whoever they were; a wise woman keeping track of her fertility cycle, hunters tracking game migration, a shaman calculating the shift of seasons. There is magic in seeing a reflection of something in our lives in the outer world and feeling in sync with it in our inner world. There are times to honor the constraint of a cycle and times to follow our own rhythm. If it seems on the surface that we are out of sync with one cycle, we are no doubt perfectly in sync with another.  "Dusk to Dawn Star Trails at Beverley, Western Australia" by inefekt69 is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 trrrrrxdz
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MissionTo help you tend to soul issues that may manifest in physical, emotional, mental or spiritual aspects of your life, and to give you tools to empower your path to harmony and well-being. Categories
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Links-There are so many kindredspirits doing the work out there. I include these links to help our community connect with one another.
SACRED HOOP Magazine Guide to Shamanism Compilation- http://www.sacredhoop.org/Pages/FreeGuide.html Kitzie's podcasts include interviews with artists and kirtan music. I love attending her weekly Satsang group and the New World Kirtan Band concerts - newworldkirtan.com/ My friend and herbalist mentor, Lawrence Birch is a Certified Clinical Herbalist, plant whisperer and shamanic practitioner. If you need custom tincture blends or are interested in a wildcrafting apprenticeship, he is the teacher extraordinaire: http://givingtreefarm.com/ Roger Wheelock and Gayle Ruth are shamanic practitioners and teachers in the Pachakuti Mesa Tradition. https://www.rainmother.com/ I am grateful to be able to take part in ceremony with them, and to support their love for the Peruvian people through the World Ayni Association. |
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