A Shaman's Inner Reflection

03/12/2023

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11/20/2022

08/29/2022

Belonging
By Gwendolyn C. Natusch, B.S.Ed., M.Ed., MSW
Last night I began to ponder once again the idea of belonging. A long-time theme and contemplation of mine. I’ve come to discover that Maslow’s Hierarchy of Human Needs indicates belonging as one of our basic needs and close in importance as food and shelter. Belonging.
I know someone from here who was born, raised and has lived more than three quarters of their life in this place. The roots of the place and the roots of their life run deep into the land itself. One might contemplate the land and the person and wonder if they are of the land itself and the land of them. Living so long in one place affords a belonging that I can only contemplate and never experience. There is a longing in me to know this experience. Me having lived in 11 states and two countries have felt more like a gypsy or wanderer collecting places as color patches that live within me, but I never belonged to any of them.
But they walk the land and know it like the back of their hand, like their very skin. They know the sounds of the birds that belong in this place. They know the stillness in the woods and the light that comes through the tree tops of this place. They know the rustling of animals on the forest floor. They know the trees and the trees know them. The Cedar tree recognizes their walk when they arrive as does the White Oak and the Whispering Pines. They know the smell of this natural wooded place and it is home and they belong there like no other place.
They know the rivers and the winds that direct the waters and push the rivers and the waterways this way and that. They have in their mind a slideshow of a hundred sunsets over the bridge and the water at dusk on the rivers here. They know what it feels like with deep familiarity to move over the waters here and feel the sticky air and the moisture heavy on their skin from the summer heat with such familiarity that if they left it behind part of them would ache to return to it. Their discoveries as a child live in this place. Their firsts of everything live here in this place.
Their family history lives in this place. The people here are the fabric of their sense of self, their connectedness and has steered their sense of value in the world. They have loved church and Jesus and those who worship alongside them and those who have prayed for them and that they have prayed for. They have been embraced and encircled in a community that has bolstered, help to define and cared for them. And it has been encircled by music and song and melody and an open heart.
Their community knows their history, too. They are woven into the fabric of the place, the community and their family. The stories go way back. Stories that are important and vital to remember and to tell in this place. This home of theirs. Stories of family, music, community, time passing, personal and family strengths and accomplishments hang in the air like joy, and hopes, and longings, and grief, and love.
The family gatherings at full tables and babies being brought into such a rich way of being and life direct the months, the years, the decades. Their must be a deep fulfillment in this that brings a deep sense of belonging. It is a wonder to me and I ponder the belonging afforded so organically to those who have found themselves forever embraced by the land, history, community, religious fellowship, family and this place of home.
It is remarkable to witness and to have a very small window open for me to peer into their life and the feeling of this place and those who are part of all of it here and where the people and the land and the history are all intertwined in Grace and Embrace. I see the stillness of the woods in this person. It is a wonder to me, because I know this stillness, too, and it has come by such different paths. Their life is such a clear expression of belonging…belonging so deeply.
I think on this with my heart as the gypsy, the second hand rose of sorts…and I think that I have found belonging within me at my center core - for the places have all scattered and changed hands like the seasons. Instead, I feel I belong to the sunsets, the mountains, or these collective experiences in my life that take a broader sense of things within me. I belong to my family which also is scattered like leaves on the wind. All of which have never come together for any length of time into one place. But this has formed who I am and I am glad of it now at my age.
But I have seen through a small open window…graced to me…of a life of belonging that was never questioned but simply grew with them, through them, and lovingly held them as they grew, stretched, dreamed and lived a life of deep rootedness. I am grateful.

08/29/2022

Five Beautiful Teachings of Shamanism
A Written Series of Five installments
by Gwendolyn C. Natusch, B.S.Ed., M.Ed., MSW
Installment One: Healing Our Ancestors

It appears that there is a real uptick in ancestral healing & transformation happening in the field of shamanic healing. I’ve been working with individuals myself for the last year or more and have developed a 3-session process for individual ancestral healing. The demand for this work required it!

So, what is this ancestral healing thing? When I first was introduced to ancestral healing I had images of my cave man ancestors come to mind. Quickly I learned that not only did I have a very limited idea of ancestors in the way that medicine people and many indigenous people understand them.

Yes indeed, we have ancestors that were cave people and ancestors that come from Africa which is understood now as the place of man’s beginnings on earth about 2 million plus years ago. However, we are more interested in our ancestors of today when we look through the lens of ancestral healing. These ancestors you know! These would be mother, father, grandmother, grandfather (both maternal and paternal), great grandmother and great grandfather. Some people knew or know their great, great grandmother or great, great grandfather and some may have heard many stories about them and their influence still lingers and lives on in the family and in the descendants. In this healing work we are concerned with the ancestors who have influenced our lives directly. It is this pool of ancestors that we look to for healing and transformation of ourselves, our ancestors themselves and also our descendants.

So, what is this all about?
Our ancestors have had wonderful lives that were full of joy, love, cheer, successes and accomplishments as well as grief, loss, trauma, illness, relationship challenges, childlessness, abuse and more.
In fact families struggle with seven types of shadows:
1. abuse
2. addiction
3. violence
4. poverty
5. illness
6. abandonment
7. betrayal

These shadows and the wholeness are passed down to descendants at the time of the ancestor’s death. They move down through the DNA of their descendants as energetic signatures. The unhealed wounds of our ancestors visit their descendants as illness, trauma; that was the same or very similar to the unhealed trauma of the ancestor, relationship wounds, money problems, issues children and bearing or losing children, addiction and on and on.

This goes in the opposite direction as well in that our ancestors pass down, talents, ability to amass wealth, to acquire a great job, happiness in family life, beauty of the body and heart and on and on. The unhealed wounds of our ancestors however, keep us from our gifts that are our own as an individual Soul and from those gifts that we have inherited from them. Ancestral wounds can keep us sick, stuck and senseless.

It is important to honor our ancestors for the lives they have lived, the courage it took to forge forward as well as for the challenges they faced and conquered. Their lives, joys, struggles and earned wisdom helped us to bring us where we are now.

Whether we know it or not we live the stories of our ancestors in our thoughts, bodies, memories and mind. They comprise what we learn at our foundations as a child and they are concretized as we grow older. This creates a heavy and carved in stone belief system of how you work, how the family works and how the world works. Most never look at their foundation stone that was carved at age 5 to 7 and live their whole lives with these beliefs and guidelines. Often, they are great grampa’s learnings and hard-earned wisdoms and descendants simply don them as if they were their own without question.

Your story isn’t new, in fact it is a replay or a retelling of stories handed down to you. They are the sagas inherited from your mother, grandfather, father and great grandmother. Some are stories and conclusions that came from fear or trauma and other stories that are really our beliefs, come from joy and wholeness. To reflect and decipher these is life changing because we recognize what needs to be made whole within us. This is where shamanic healing with the ancestors can be life changing and open you to more joy, success, passion, love, stillness and contentment.

In ancestral healing we want to clear our DNA that contains our ancestors’ limits, wounds and traumas from our body, energy field and mental and emotional bodies. In this healing work we bring their lessons fully into our awareness and discover which of these wounds live in our life, heart, mind and body. In the shamanic ancestral healing work, we clear these shadows from our lives and our energy field and in doing so we also free or ancestors from their unhealed wounds. This also keeps these traumas and wounds from our descendants and prevents them from showing up or clears them like the ancestors are cleared energetically through the awareness building and the energy clearing. The DNA signatures are made whole and are cleared through this sacred healing work.
In this healing of the ancestors, you will also connect with your ancestors’ joys, loves, passions, successes and accomplishments. You will see where these also live in your life as well! Ultimately, you change your inner stories and are no longer limited by an old, old list of guidelines for life that you have outgrown or never explored your own sense of them to see if they fit, if they serve you or even if you agree with them at all.

This is ancestral healing work, this is the clearing and transforming of family trauma and unhealed wounds found in the culture, behavior and shadows of families. Each generation is tasked to clear and heal their own wounds and shadows so that their descendants do not have to carry and heal them and they leave a beautiful legacy after they die.

I implore you to honor your ancestors or they will continue to haunt you and to live through you through these energetic DNA signature, family stories, beliefs, and culture. You will be destined to live their trauma wounds, illnesses and unhappiness’s.

In shamanic ancestral healing you can change the stories and break the curse from your ancestor's wounds so they and you are restored and healed. Then you can begin to celebrate your ancestors no matter how terrible their legacy was.
We do this work for ourselves, our ancestors and our children and grandchildren! We also do it to elevate the world. When we rewrite the ancestral stories, we elevate our ancestors and let go of holding them responsible for our lives and negative legacies. In this way we stand in self responsibility. We then can bring home to our hearts the beautiful gifts, wisdoms and joys of our ancestors and our Soul!

08/29/2022

Five Beautiful Teachings of Shamanism
A Written Series of Five installments on Shamanism
By Gwendolyn C. Natusch, B.S.Ed., M.Ed., MSW

As a practitioner both personally and professionally of shamanism since 1989 I write this series on shamanic teachings because I am passionate about what shamanism is, its organic nature as a means to connect and transform in relationship with God/Source and it’s potential as a tool for inner transformation and healing. It is my hope that you will find inspiration and maybe even a new idea about the world and your relationship with The Divine in an active and “partnershipped” way! Read on oh courageous ones!
The first line of order is to speak to what shamanism is and what shamans do. Without this context the five beautiful teachings of shamanism, which varies from culture to culture, but maintains core, universal beliefs that define the heart of shamanism, has little meaning or connection. So, with the help of eloquent Mariah Molyle, I begin this series with just that:
What is Shamanism & What Do Shamans Do?
Shamans are mapmakers working on the energetic level, closest to Source, (a.k.a. - the Universe, God, Spirit, etc.) to help to dream our world into being. Problems are solved, healings occur and new perceptions are created by opening a dialogue with nature, utilizing the power of archetypes, and by journeying into realms of consciousness. The shaman develops this capacity of moving through levels of consciousness through deep focus and moving through states of consciousness like we do when we dream at night; only the shaman participates in consciousness in awareness and practice. Shamans do not wait to have a meaningful and potent dream every now and again or every 5 to 10 years. Shamans dream consciously by choice and in this way develops an intimate, active and informative relationship with The Divine.
Mariah Molyle shares, “We use the term mapmaker in shamanism, which is just a fancy term to describe the shaman’s ability to assist their clients with charting a new life map. Maybe the client feels like their current life map is limiting or has a lot of dead ends to it. Perhaps the desired destination isn’t even on the current map. The shaman helps create a new map, or a new route to the client’s destiny.”
The map that Molyle references is really the inner stories that serve us and the inner stories that do not serve us and instead limit us or create blocks that lead, often, to physical presentation in the body as disease. Shamans as channels for the Divine and through Spirit’s lead and healing energy, can repair and release long held imprints in their own or a client’s energy field that oftentimes lead to disease. The shaman assists in shifting the beliefs, which shifts the inner map we hold, and in this shift, new perspective have room to arrive and healing can potentially happen in the body because the story map has changed and when this happens the body follows the new story!
“Dreaming our world into being means being a dreamer, instead of being dreamed. This includes dreaming of and achieving outcomes, instead of letting life just happen to you, and seeing misfortune as lessons in strength and character-building instead of devastating pitfalls or victimhood”, says Molyle.
Shamans often walk on the edges of society because they do not buy into the mainstream way of being and doing. Shamans are visionaries with connections to larger realities and this connection allows them to see and do things that do not always reflect the thoughts and ways of the majority. It is often said that shamans have one foot in ordinary reality and another foot in the spiritual realm. It is the work of the shaman to refine their ability to see the physical world and the spiritual world in their every day, moment to moment experiences. This takes mental discipline and a committed spiritual practice and a committed willingness to continue to better themselves and heal all wounds and shadows within them that keep them limited, stuck, wounded and limited in their capacity to hold Divine Light, Love, joy and the ability to dream their highest and most refined dreams/visions into reality and physical manifestation.
The shaman also befriends benevolent spiritual allies in their journeys into the spiritual realm. These are referred to as archetypal spiritual beings. They are guided by Love and Beautiful Intentions. The work of the shaman is that of discernment of these energies. Shamans are also charged with the essential task of keeping their own energy, thoughts and bodies clear and perpetuating their own inner growth, healing and being a clear and integral channel for healing and visioning. Source meets us where we are through journeying in forms that are beautiful, safe and loving. These are the archetypes. They show us our beauty and our shadows that long to be transformed and they help us to heal.
When the potential shaman has walked their path long enough, they are ready to be called to help others heal because they have walked the path of inner transformation and healing and can be an experienced guide for others to walk through their healing journey.
“The archetypes are ancient forces of nature that live in our psyche. These can be a wide range of elements within us including the masculine and feminine, the creator, preserver and destroyer like Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva in Hinduism, or the victim, orphan, movie characters, perpetrator and rescuer”, describes Molyle.
Spirit or God meets us where we are and appears in the image that will open our hearts to healing, new perspectives and spiritual teachings and come as guides, animals, trees, a flower, a cloud, and also as archetypes. There are archetypes such as the Fool, the Princess or Prince, Jesus, Mini Mouse and the Generic Stepmother to name just a few. There are many, many kinds of archetypes and these are beings or ideas that we all know collectively.
“But the main archetypes that shamans work with, Molyle points out, are animal spirits. When journeying (aka meditation), the shaman calls in these archetypes as allies for guidance and healing.”
Molyle concludes with: “Shamanism is about seeing divinity in all living things and interacting with the spiritual realm. Shamans work with stones, plants, animals, archetypes and spirit guides, knowing every element in our reality has its own energy and potential. Shamans use dreams, plant medicine, drumming, rattling, singing, chanting and journeying to travel through and between the realms of Spirit and timelessness.”
A note about Mariah Moyle: Mariah is a shamanic energy medicine practitioner. She is passionate about her path as a healer and is dedicated to bringing these ancient shamanic teachings to the western world through writing and practitioner work.

01/17/2022

When I went to Omega in New York in October last year to see Alberto Villoldo and three of the Laika Shaman’s, Alberto spoke about viruses and bacteria being the mind of Mother Earth. He spoke briefly so I didn’t understand the depth of what he shared, but he invited everyone present to come into relationship with bacteria and viruses, and so forth by beginning a dialogue and conscious relationship with the bacteria/virus. His example to us is an invitation to us to speak to the bacteria where we meet it in our lives; such as taking our probiotic. Before you take the probiotic speak to these living, helping organisms as if you were speaking to the mind of Mother Earth. Let Mother Earth know that we, you and me, are part of the solution to all this unfolding on earth. Come into relationship with the virus in this way with love. This can be done in journey and in your waking dreams. What imbalance is Corona wanting us to become aware of and assist in transforming into wholeness?
-In Munay❤️

10/18/2021

The Soul Calls for Transformation Part I
Many refer to this sort of thing as the ascension process or even the dark night of the Soul. In these last many months our world has brought us to a place of looking within and moving through all kinds of challenges, fears and doubts. It has been a process happening collectively and individually.
I haven’t written here on the Reflections of a Shaman page for quite some time because I wanted only to write here when it came from a deep place within me that was real and authentic and in whatever way had brought me wisdom or healing or insight.
It is with this that I begin my reflections on the journey I am currently on of transformation at the foundation of my life, at the level of the bedrock of my belief systems. Sometimes a house needs to be opened, exposed and even parts of it torn down and other parts valued and saved and cherished in order to rebuild the foundation it was built upon. This is the path I’m on. It is a spiritual path and it is also a human and very physical path.
In my life I have been through two periods of a dark night of the Soul. The first was, after a 10-year search, I met both of my biological parents in a two-week time span. I learned many stories about my life from ages 0-5. I was adopted at 5 years old and came from a family with mum and dad and three children. 31 years after being adopted I met my birth parents. This experience changed me. The ideas and beliefs I had about who I was and what my identity was completely changed which left me in a place of having to pull myself back together into a new identity.
The second time I experienced a dark night of the Soul is when my husband and I split up for a year after being married for 29 years. Again, I had to let go of an old identity and allow a new sense of self to come into being.
Both of these experiences were challenging to the core and I fell apart in order to transform and come back to myself more whole, stronger, freer and happier.
This year, I have embarked upon another dark night of the Soul.
But what is a dark night of the Soul really?
The Dark Night of the Soul is when everything seems to come apart at the seams and one is left in a place of feeling bereft, lost, separate, desperate, alone, frightened, hopeless and all of the beliefs, spiritual tools and comfortable ways you have dealt with life and challenges seem to not be enough or don’t have deep enough reach to calm your mind, heart body and Soul.
The dark night is a time when the universe reaches out and asks us to move through an experience that will change us forever and to do it with awareness, grace so that we find the wisdom, gift and transformation in it.
Each of us in our own way will have a dark night of the Soul. It is an experience much like the caterpillar turned to liquid in its chrysalis and emerges after the greatest challenge, giving up who we know ourselves to be, to exit the cocoon as someone completely different…free…new…and this newness, these gifts, these lessons direct our life forward…

Check out this link for more indepth meaning on the dark night of the Soul:
https://www.kosmosjournal.org/article/a-dark-night-of-the-soul-and-the-discovery-of-meaning/

Are you going through a dark night of the Soul? Share your thoughts…

09/23/2020

Tom and Terry From the Metaphysical Mysteries Podcast interview Shaman and Healer Gwendolyn Natusch from The Center For Personal Evolution. The Center for Pe...