The energy exchange is powerful.  My energy is clearly elevated in Parashakti’s presence.  I can visualize what’s asked of me, a shield circular in nature, like a medicine wheel.  My shield begins as a pink bubble which encircles me and becomes electrically charged and glowing orange/copper.  I have come full circle, a new door is opened and my path has been laid out already.  (been here/done that.)  The cards are chosen with excitement, revealing the medicine wheel, the energy of the East, of new beginnings.  A 20 card* is chosen, I believe it is described as a power card, “an ace up my sleeve.”

My journey begins with a walk around the medicine wheel, around my quest circle.  I am amazed at how quickly I can bring myself back to my circle, the first place I ever attempted a quest in the NJ Pine Barrens.  It’s the same day in my mind, but the energy is empowering.  I quickly feel taken over by the forces of nature.  My body is shifting almost rocking from feet to head and back again.  I am told to give in to the healing energy and let it take me.  In the circle I hear a rhythm in my head.  I let a waterfall shower over my back washing discomfort away.  The gravitational pull on my legs is comforting as I rock deeper into the circle.  My arms feel lifted, like a pull between my legs being grounded and my torso being pulled upward.  It’s explained as healing energy.

At some point I am make aware of the back ground noise and its symbolism of the internal noise that pulls me in many distracted directions.

I am now told to approach my guide and begin my journey.  I see a trusting man that I greet with a familiar hug (the hug with a nurturing connection) and agree to let guide me.  Once I acknowledge the exchange I fear being led.  I witness my struggle to let go and be led.  Is it that I don’t truly know how to be led?  The struggle to go brings up thoughts of my self directed isolation and desire to be led.  I know I desire to be able to fully trust and let myself go with another.

After some time I envision my guide as a spirit, a flowing entity of light, that lifts me up and I am able to go with her.  I am led to the ocean, my safe place, seated on the sand gazing at the ocean.  I am immediately comforted thinking I have been brought to a safe place of my choice, it is about where I like to be, my opinions, not someone’s.  I have a memory I recently shared with my friend about a time in my life, during high school when my body reacted.  Is the meaning that the guides were communicating with me through use of my physical body?  I am led to a river with a bridge.  The river begins glass like and serene and continues as it flows steadily over and through rocks and boulders, unchanged and unyielding.  I identify with the water in a few ways.  Am I just surface and not as deep… the reason I fear the ascent in scuba diving and enjoy the power of the waves as I surf?  Is it a connection with the river in that it flows unaffected by the obstacles, powering past boulders with determination?  I feel a connection to nature, the sun, and the trees… the connection highlights a connection with the spirit.  I see the dark/shadow before me on my left side and the light on my right.  Is it to question the light and dark of beings?  Is it the off-balance of energies? **

I slowly begin to hear more sounds in the room, the hallways surrounding the room I am physically in.  I am returning from a very comfortable and magical place.  I want to hold on… but I tell myself to trust the process, that my guide will be with me whenever I need and the recognition of the journey has only just begun.  I decided to let go of the string connecting me to the spirit and I begin to speak to Parashakti.

I am asked to share my experience.  I heal with tears as the depths of my soul are revealed within my words.  I experience the pain with an understanding that I am being cleansed and rebalanced.  My body is physically convulsing; my spine, my arms, legs all tremor and shake.  The shakti, my shakti is triggered, as I am now an invoker.  I am happy to witness the physical and emotional release, as I begin to receive.

I am told to hold a ceremony Sunday (the third day) and am told to ask my guide what that would entail.  What is my guide telling me to do over the next days?   In His infinite wisdom he tells me to “Shut Up!”  Parashakti asks if I can commit to that… it is challenging to fully commit, but I will hold myself to it.  I am told to be in the sun and see the image of bathing, almost a sunshine shower or bath.

I return to the alter, shivering to the bone.  The chill subsides and I feel ecstasy.  My heart is filled to a staggering capacity where I can physically feel my heart center stuffed to the max, solid.  Parashakti is told to advise me on creating an alter in the East, at home, and it will change the energy of my space.  We ask the guide to present Himself in animal form, as I choose a card.  The Wolf!  (Howling at a moon.)***  Parashakti advises me to research the wolf as a spirit guide.  She says to allow the wolf to reveal the teacher within.  I am to find something physical to symbolize the wolf to place on the alter.  We close with the reminder that the shield is particularly important for me to remember.  I can carry it with me every where.  I envision the different types of shields; a medicine wheel, a quest circle, armor.  The final words include a reminder to receive.  I take from that a reminder of my privilege to receive and not only give.  I feel empowered and on my way.  I truly feel God’s divine grace is the room and a connection to the spirit in each being present.  Hari Om Tat Sat

Notes:

As an aside, I researched qualities of the Wolf, like its nature is to be Free as a lone wolf, or communal in a pack.  I learned of the alpha, beta and omega roles of the pack (my tattoo is the alpha and omega- my validation) The wolf is symbolic of a need for balance between personal/family and community needs.  The wolf does not fight needlessly and avoids fighting whenever possible.  The wolf knows the importance of communication; highlighting the need to hone my speaking skills to effectively relate my feelings.  He teaches to know who I am and develop confidence and strength in who I am.  The Wolf is Ritualistic- I note it is time to become ritualistic for my wellbeing and for accelerated and smooth transformation.  Personally designed rituals can help me communicate my needs and express my feelings.   My ritual should honor the forces of spirituality and connect with the life forces of Mother Earth.

Love and Light

Jenevi

by econoshamanic

I'd been looking for a teacher to teach me shamanism. No, I longed for such a teacher but wasn't sure how to find one. On this day, I was reading an article about how to find and work with a shamanic teacher and was wanting this for myself soooooooo badly. My wife and I decided to have lunch at a vegetarian Buddhist Chinese restaurant in Queens. When we sat down at our table, I looked up, and at the next table was Parashakti, a shaman whom I knew from the New York "scene" but had never spoken to. In fact, I'd wanted to speak to her for the past few years, but hadn't.

I was suddenly paralyzed in my place. Although I was looking at my menu and trying to decide what I wanted to order, I couldn't concentrate. I was disoriented, sweating, shivering in my place. My wife wanted to know what was wrong with me. I couldn't answer coherently. I felt magnetically drawn to Parashakti's table, but my mind created many reasons not to bother her. Just when I told myself I couldn't possibly bother her while she was enjoying time with her husband, he got up to go to the bathroom. The magnetic pull got stronger. Would I have the courage to get up? What will happen? How did I get here, anyway...?

I took my first steps on the path in the early 1970s, with the help of the Plant Spirits. They gave me visions and a spiritual perspective I didn't have previously, but what they didn't give me at the time was emotional maturity. Still, from that long ago, I felt the Call and knew my life would be about answering that Call.

In 1978, I was initiated by an enlightened master, and that initiation resulted in a powerful Kundalini awakening. I devoted my life to meditation and study, lived for two years in my teacher's ashram and afterwards, for six years, co-hosted a meditation center in my home.

By the late 1980s, I was married and a series of events in my work life had brought me to accounting -- a career my mother always wanted for me, but that I never really wanted myself. But the force of karma was at work, and before I knew it, not only was I an accountant, but I had entered graduate school in pursuit of a doctorate in accounting and economics.

Being in graduate school had a strange effect on me -- it pushed a whole slew of emotional buttons I'd managed to ignore my whole life. I became confused and infatuated with the pursuit of rationality. I turned my back on the Call. The result was increasing dysfunction and unhappiness. In name, I was still on the path but inside, I knew I was lost.

Starting in 1993, my life started to fall apart. I was afflicted with numerous diseases -- both physical and mental that doctors could not explain. I became addicted -- mostly relationship addictions -- but they were strong and devastating. I had no anchor anymore. The spiritual traditions I'd followed had no answers to what was going on inside of me. There was the sense that all of this was instigated by a process that was fundamentally spiritual and evolutionary, but the effects on my life were painful and destructive. All I believed to be true about life, or at least MY life, was taken away from me. I didn't know who I was. After ten years of this descent into hell, I found myself living in the unseemly underbelly of life -- with characters I'd never have hung out with and risking my very existence on a day-to-day basis. My wife left me; my friends didn't want to know me. I was alone, I had nothing, I had died.

And then I was born. Initially through the grace of my old friends the Plant Spirits, whom I had not visited in over 25 years, I had a rebirth and then -- wonder of wonders -- I found I had many spirit allies!

What was amazing about my rebirth was that with it, I found my shamanic vocation. I suddenly "knew" I was meant to be a shaman. I barely knew what this meant. I would soon find out. First, I discovered I had some talent for wandering the worlds of spirit and non-ordinary reality. I found that my own healing and spiritual evolution now involved working in non-ordinary states -- shamanic states, where incredible healing and transformation were taking place on a daily basis. In the past, I'd practiced meditation diligently and done lots of psychotherapy and still no relief from my endless emotional pain. Now, in shamanic trance, the psycho-spiritual afflictions of many lifetimes were resolving and integrating. In my studies, I would read about shamanic initiations and was amazed to find myself reading descriptions of my dark experiences over the past ten years. Indeed, in this physical world of consensus reality, the spirits had dismembered me and put me back together. I found that such "shamanic illnesses" were common among shamans in many aboriginal cultures. The spirits had been teaching me diligently for a long time.

And then I knew -- it was time for a human teacher. For a long while I searched and found some excellent teachers who taught me much informally, but I couldn't commit to any. I was longing for a teacher to commit to.

And now, here I was, in a Buddhist Chinese restaurant in Queens. I approached Parashakti and we talked. She told me she was just starting an apprenticeship program and invited me to join the group. She wrote her phone number on the back of the article I had been reading on finding a teacher!

Since my shamanic work began, I've recognized that my particular calling is shamanic shadow work -- going into non-ordinary reality to be with my disowned dark side, being with my pain, accepting myself in my wholeness and welcoming back all the parts I'd rejected in my life. Further, I've learned that it is through the rejection of soul parts that we create dysfunction in the world. I began to journey in ways that allowed me to see how this works on a collective level. I see how all of us -- six billion plus people all disown our own darkness and then project that which we reject in ourselves out onto the world around us. We dream this world according to what we reject in ourselves. No wonder we live in a world of war, disease, terrorism, disregard for Mother Earth, and (currently) economic crisis. I now know that my path is to serve by helping people to reclaim their lost soul parts and re-integrate them, for the purpose of healing the earth. My method asks nothing less than taking 100% full responsibility for creating our world, to own that responsibility, to feel it until something in us "dies" and only then to learn to dream with intention. I call my method of earth healing econoshamanics -- the art of owning the dream that creates the structure of our world and then changing it! I am in the process of imbibing these teachings myself so I may share them in a healing and loving way.

Much of this work has happened under Parashakti's tutelage. It was she who shifted my focus from self-healing to service (which has in turn, accelerated my self-healing!). It was while working with her that I found and picked up my "medicine" and now walk in a more wakeful way, understanding the tools I will use in my public mission. I've worked with Parashakti and several of her elders. All are very powerful shamans who have facilitated an inner alchemy that is evident each day and that truly, is only beginning.

I'm answering the Call again!

AHO!!!!!

econoshamanic teaches accounting at a large university on Long Island. He is Parashakti's shamanic apprentice and is also enrolled in Grof Transpersonal Training to certify as a Holotropic Breathwork™ practitioner. He calls himself “econoshamanic” to honor the two sides of his life – the rational accountant and the shaman – and to hold space for their integration. He is married and has three incredible feline teachers. He is in the process of launching, "econoshamanics", a shamanic process whereby we come face to face with how we dream the world, take responsibility for the condition of the world we dream and learn to put healing intention into our dreams.

©2009, Kevin D. Sachs, PhD. All rights reserved.