35 years ago I had a dream that I was an eagle launching off a high crag into the infinite blue, and as I took wing I lost confidence that I could fly. The intervening decades have been a period of slowly building that knowledge of who I really am, with a couple of dismemberings along the way.
Today I was over at Derek Gane's monthly journeying group, and for a while I was that eagle. And one thing that showed me, or reminded me of, is that I do like the big picture shamanically, I am not identified with a particular approach. And that helps me see the essence of what this Shamanic thing is about. That is what the big picture enables you to do, to find the heart of things.
But then also as I was the eagle, I found myself being carried along by strong winds, and I'd never thought of that before. I thought Eagle was just big picture, but no, because you are soaring, Spirit finds it easy to take you where it wants, more easily in a way than if you have your 4 feet planted firmly on the ground, which is its own medicine.
And those winds were strong, and I don't know where they were taking me, and I don't need to know, but it feels very good. No particular major course of action yet feels right in my life, and that is because I need to be taken to where those winds are taking me.
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I
offer Shamanic consultations, usually by skype, in which we can talk
over anything you want to talk over. I may use the Medicine Wheel,
Journeying, Astrology, Tarot or anything that works. And it centres
around listening to ourselves in a deep way. I work on a donation basis,
and I am happy with whatever is easy for you: I love this work.
Contact: BWGoddard1@aol.co.uk
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And then we were each given an oracle card, and I picked The Way Shower. On shit. I'm English and I'd rather be modest, but Spirit seems to want me otherwise. So here it is. One of my abilities, which comes through in my Facebook posts and blogs, is to be able to articulate experience. Some people have deep experience but aren't that good at putting it into words. Some people are good with words and ideas, but it can feel a bit cerebral. I can do both, and this is why I sometimes get corresponding responses from people, that I have expressed something they feel. This is what writers do. Or more than that, I have expressed something they had kept quiet about but that needed saying. I have also found courage, and that is because like the armadillo I have developed a thick skin, yet keeping, I hope, a soft heart. Living with others disagreement and even judgement forges character and gives you freedom and a sense of solidity in who you are.
So what would give me the right to be the Way Shower? Experience of the Way of course. The first point is that there is no' Way', in the sense of going from A to B. We are not going somewhere, like Heaven or Hell. That is an old and out of balance paradigm, that leads to hubris or despair, and that has continued in the idea of 'Evolution'. No, we are looking for the centre of the Medicine Wheel, we circle around that true centre of ourselves, like I have done with the Eagle all these years, not even knowing a lot of the time that that was what I was doing.
So I am a Shower of the Way firstly because I know there is no Way. And then secondly because I know, at least to a degree, how to navigate that boat which is ourselves as it is carried along on the river of Spirit. On the deepest levels, we cannot set goals, rather our task is to listen to and trust in Spirit. And in that is everything, all the abundance we could wish for and all the joy and meaning we could wish for and more. But to get to that point of listening.... there's the rub. I have been dismembered twice in the last 35 years, all with the aim of getting me to listen more deeply. That is what the Shamanic Illness is about. Spirit will take us to death's door or beyond in its compassionate imperative to get us to listen and to live accordingly. It is a slow process, and it can be confusing, and I can be with you on this one, I will stay the course, and in this sense I am also a Way Shower.
And I am the Way Shower because I am the Eagle. I can tell you about this Shamanism because I understand the heart of it, the essence of it. And I am the Way Shower because I have the courage and inclination to proclaim it, this feels like who I am.
As I say, I have no major course of action clear in my mind yet. But that is because those strong winds have not yet taken me to the place they will be taking me; have not yet given me the perspective and vision that is the essence of this Air element that is my home. But the Journey and the Card have pointed me towards what Spirit has in mind. I just need to keep navigating the boat
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