SHAMANIC COUNSELLING: AN INVITATION

What I like to do most is to talk things over with people. Insights happen, issues move on. I've been doing this using astrology for 17 years. I love all the usual shamanic stuff - the journeying, the healing work, the sweat lodges, the pipe ceremonies, the trance dance, the medicine wheel and so on. And somehow I feel I should end up running groups, and I know I'd like to do that and that I'd be good at it. But somehow I end up chewing stuff over with people, usually online. 

And I guess you could call it Shamanic Counselling. That phrase tends to get used to mean guiding people to find their spirit helpers in journey work. But it's not what I mean, though it may involve that. What I mean is that there is a spirit within each of us that is trying to unfold, and in that process we get to places that are difficult and hard to get our heads around. And this is precisely because there is something new trying to happen, so how could we possibly understand it? And sometimes there has to be a demolition job first, and Spirit is very good at that, but by the same token it can be hard to see it creatively, as an opportunity, to tune in to what is trying to be born - maybe ever so slowly and painfully! And of course we get our own promptings from Spirit as to the meaning and the way forward.

So if any of you folks out there would like an online session with me, email me at bwgoddard1@aol.co.uk. I'm quite informal. It may run to a number of sessions of indeterminate length, and you'd probably get to know me to some extent also. I don't do the one-way relationships that therapists believe in. And we'd probably talk about all sorts of stuff, and I'll probably cheat by using a bit of astrology. And I'll accept money, whatever is comfortable, there is no lower limit, just so much that you don't end up feeling obligated

THE SHADOW

You can learn about your shadow by reading history. You can read about Auschwitz, you can read about the concentration camps in Russia, and you can imagine yourself as a guard instead of as a heroic rescuer of unfortunate victims, which would be very, very unlikely. And once you can imagine yourself as a guard, which is a terrifying thing to do, then you understand something about yourself. 

You cannot have proper respect for yourself until you know that you are a monster, because you won't act carefully enough. If you think well I'm a nice person, I'd never do anyone any harm... You're no saint, you can be sure of that, and the harm that you do people can come in many many ways. (Jordan Peterson)

CACTI

Went to this cactus shop near Winkleigh in Devon today. I used to keep cacti as a kid, and then I began again about 10 years ago when a friend gave me a bunch of seedlings. On my way out, I asked the owner - who has been dealing in cacti since he was 10 years old - if he had any Peyote. I expected him to say no, but got an enthusiastic yes. He keeps them hidden above a stand, and has sold about 150 this winter. So I bought a couple at £3.50 each. (You need about 4 for a 'trip' - not his word - he told me). 

Peyote

He does most of his trade online now, he posts cacti to people, but paypal threatened to drop him if he continued to sell Peyote online. Then it turned out that one of the cacti I had bought was a San Pedro, another teacher plant. He only thought to mention it because of my interest in Peyote So I bought another one. You need to ingest about 4 inches of the stem in this case. 

The owner, Ralph, is getting on now, but he is good to chat to. He's managed not to do much, if any, in the way of teacher plants himself, but he wants to, and he suggested we could meet in the pub sometime to talk about it. His friends keep inviting him to Peru for that purpose. I'm not that drawn to doing much of it myself - having done a load of it when I was 20 and been changed by it - but I like being around the plants themselves. Maybe it is their spirit

UNLEASHING THE LEOPARD

A few nights ago I dreamed I was walking along Exeter High St (my local city in the UK) with a leopard on a leash. The leopard tried to bound off after some prey, but I restrained her. I was then told that I would not be in another relationship until I was happy being on my own.

I once asked my Chippewa Cree friend Ron what the purpose of his people's way was, and he said it was about becoming a balanced human being. And this is what the dream is asking of me: to become balanced, so that I am complete and happy in myself.

And part of being balanced is being wild and natural - and sometimes fierce and dangerous! - as the leopard is. In the past, I have always felt on a leash when in relationships, that part of me had been surrendered, and was being lived through the other person. And there was always therefore a sense of relief and reclaiming when the relationship came to an end. 

This being a half-person is for many of us normal and natural, in the sense of one's 'other half'. But from mid-life, there is often a push from within the psyche to find that other half within. This is classic Jungian psychology. And it is also reflected in the Native American idea that one is not much use to others in a deeper sense until one has become balanced - which is why elders are valued. This balance is seen symbolically in the Pipe Ceremony in the joining of bowl and stem, female and male, a universal principle.

I was pushed out of my last relationship not by my personality, which would probably have carried on for a long time in a slightly miserable way, but by something deeper that I did not understand and therefore doubted for some years, until it became irresistible. It was my psyche wanting to individuate, to become balanced in this deeper sense. I see quite a lot of people of my sort of age who are single, and they sometimes doubt their capacity for relationship as a result, but I think it is often this new balance that they are moving towards.

As an astrologer, I'm often approached by people at times of transition. So I've got to see this quite a lot. And the stereotypes are often true, which is why they are stereotypes! Men start to feel more deeply (Venus) and women start to stand up more for what they personally want and not be so beholden to others (Mars). And on a deeper level it is the soul calling us for its own mysterious purposes, it is much more than just a psychological integration.

The dream told me I need to feel happy on my own. So I decided to, and it happened, just like that! Though that was just the first stage, I'm sure. We need books about this mid-life process: finding the other half within, and the value that solitude can have for this, and what it means to be with someone else when 2 people are able to live alongside, rather than through, the other. I suspect there remains a need to feel inspired by and intrigued by the other person, a sense that we will never fully understand them.

Dream

2 nights ago I dreamed about the Dalai Lama. There was a quality of deep openness and compassion and naturalness about him. I was experiencing these qualities in myself. In the dream it contrasted with the closed quality of a Buddhist group I was once part of. 

And in my experience these qualities come from being true to myself, relaxing and trusting in what is deep within me, and putting to one side ideas as to what is right and wrong. It is not about 'trying to be good'. It is kind of the opposite and, in a way, risky.

Why I Quit Being a Therapist -- Six Reasons by Daniel Mackler

If we do healing work of any kind, then we need to be able to talk to people, and listen to people. I think the main qualification for that is the ability to listen to ourselves, and that usually takes time and probably a certain amount of dismemberment! And here's a bit of what Daniel Mackler says:

"I think a lot of people can do exactly what psychotherapists do, and do it much much better, if they just have a gift for being able to have a comfortable, caring, respectful conversation with another person, and lots of people can do this.

I worked with tons and tons of people who had horrible traumas. I was on the front line of listening to them and feeling what they were going through along with them, empathising, also crying along with people, I was crying a lot, I cried every day. I remember a lot of therapists really didn't relate to me because they were distancing people, they kept all those therapeutic boundaries, which in my experience really don't help people very much, but they do help protect the therapist from the pain."

'NEGATIVE THOUGHTS': A NAVAJO PERSPECTIVE

Here is a good traditional way of seeing all that stuff that bugs us, our wounds and our paranoia and our depression and our anger and all the rest of it. It's from a Navajo shepherd called Wolfkiller who lived from about 1855 to 1926: 

"The Navajo knew that thoughts create your reality. This was the central teaching that Wolfkiller's grandfather passed on: to focus on the powers of nature instead of falling prey to ongoing 'evil' thoughts. 'Evil' in this context is equivalent to what, more than 150 years later, we would term 'negative'.

In the process of facing such thoughts within him, the young Wolfkiller asked his grandfather, 'Why do we have evil within us?' The elder replied: 'We must have evil in us to make us strong. If we did not have the evil, we would never have gained the strength that we have now. We must have the evil so that we will fight. A struggle always gives us more strength, and the harder we fight, the more we gain in strength. The ones among us who are too lazy to fight never get anything. At times we are tempted to sit and wait for what might come, but it is not right to do nothing. Everything is made to fight its way through life. We must work to live, and this life is not all there is, as I have told you before. If we can control ourselves, we can do anything we set out to do. Day after day we must work to gain strength to go on until the time comes when we will go out of this body.'

This quote is from Chris Luttichau's "Calling Us Home". It was a much tougher life that these guys had, but the inner struggle that is being referred to is perennial. I think it can also be problematic for us, as our Christian background is one of damning ourselves: we are 'original sinners', we still carry that strongly with us. So to carry out this struggle - which is the stuff of life itself - we need the basis that we are fundamentally spirit, divine, that we are aligned with 'the powers of nature'. Otherwise we will be damning and judging of ourselves, and that is counter-productive. A better - and again traditional way - to look at it is which wolf we feed, the black wolf or the white wolf.

ON LIVING IN THE GUTTER

There's a side of me that practically goes into trauma when faced with difficulties. There's also a good chunk of me that doesn't and carries on as usual, so others don't necessarily get to know It happened this time a week ago when my car wouldn't start. And it peaked 2 days ago when the non-starting became terminal and I was grounded. I lay awake at night feeling bleak and overwhelmed. And that feeling has been coming and going, and given me much food for thought.

There is a bracing feeling to it of having something in myself to grapple with. As an ayahuasca experience suggested to me 20 years ago, it is that wounded element that keeps me grounded and keeps me learning. I'm nearly 61 and I've been dealing with this sort of stuff for decades now and it doesn't get 'better'. But I am more able to stand apart from it. I don't assume it is just childhood stuff, it feels big and old and deep. I don't need to know the origin. 

And I am also able to be with it in the journeying I do, which is embodiment based. The guides are there to take me over, they love to do that and they love to help me. I get strong images for what this stuff looks like, and we work through those images. And slowly the stuff shifts. 

And funnily enough I have an appreciation for the way in which it knocks me sideways and keeps a bit of humility there. It is such a burden having a lot of ego, and so easy to acquire if, like me, you find you have stuff to say. As Oscar Wilde said “We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.” I relish being in the gutter, because it gives me empathy and gives me a sense of belonging to this stumbling human race, all of whom are struggling in their own way and often coming out badly against the standards that we like to impose on ourselves.