Shamanic Transformations: True Stories of the Moment of Awakening
320
Shamanic Transformations: True Stories of the Moment of Awakening
320eBook
Related collections and offers
Overview
• With contributions by Sandra Ingerman, Hank Wesselman, John Perkins, Alberto Villoldo, Lewis Mehl-Madrona, Tom Cowan, Lynn Andrews, Linda Star Wolf, and others
• Also includes shamanic awakening experiences from those with unique shamanic paths--teachers, mothers, social workers, academics, and even rappers
How does one receive the “call” to enter onto the shamanic path? What causes some people to change their safe, uneventful, and ordinary lives and start on a spiritual search? For many it is a singular instant, a flash when the mystical reveals itself and the person is drawn into the world of shamanic power. For a few, it is a more gradual awakening, filled with numinous events that build upon one another until the calling of the shamanic path can no longer be ignored.
In this book of remarkable stories, we learn firsthand about the many different forms of the “aha” moment of shamanic awakening, whether they arise from ceremony, near-death experiences, dream messages, or entheogenic substances. We travel alongside Sandra Ingerman, Hank Wesselman, John Perkins, Alberto Villoldo, Lewis Mehl-Madrona, Tom Cowan, Lynn Andrews, Linda Star Wolf, and other well-known shamanic practitioners as they begin their transformations into the prominent shamans we know them as. We experience the real-life shamanic epiphanies of those with unique shamanic paths--teachers, mothers, social workers, academics, healers, and even rappers who have all experienced a moment in time in which they were awakened and the shamanic path showed itself to them.
As each of these unique and beautiful stories of unexpected realization, insight, and inspiration unfolds, we see how these single moments--usually entirely unexpected--are able to transform the individual’s life, clearing their vision and allowing a new consciousness to emerge. As a whole, this collection paints a breathtaking portrait of the intricacies of the shamanic path and the paradigm shift of which we all are part.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781620554760 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Inner Traditions/Bear & Company |
| Publication date: | 08/17/2015 |
| Sold by: | SIMON & SCHUSTER |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 320 |
| File size: | 757 KB |
About the Author
Itzhak Beery is an internationally recognized shamanic healer and teacher. He was initiated into the Circle of 24 Yachaks by his Quechua teacher in Ecuador and by Amazonian Kanamari Pagè. He has also trained intensively with other elders from South and North America. The founder of ShamanPortal.org and cofounder of the New York Shamanic Circle, he is on the faculty of New York Open Center. His work has been featured in the New York Times, films, TV, and webinars. An accomplished visual artist and owner of an award-winning advertising agency, he grew up on Kibbutz Beit Alfa in Israel and lives in New York.
Read an Excerpt
19
Baby, I Was Born This Way
Linda Star Wolf
I was born into a loving family and grew up with the good, hardworking, salt-of-the-earth Christian folks of rural western Kentucky. Although there was fundamentalism, there was also an innate closeness to the land and family. I spent most of my childhood outside with my grandmother Mammy Jones. Mammy recognized my overly sensitive nature and psychic gifts and treated my “strangeness” as something to be proud of. She taught me that it was part of God’s gift to me. She protected and cultivated my gifts, helping me see, hear, and interpret the world around me with shamanic eyes. She showed me the connection between the spiritual world and the natural world. Mammy Jones infused me with her own special brand of faith that even though I was different, I was special.
Mammy also taught me to connect with the dream world. In the mornings as we ate breakfast, she always asked me about my dreams. We talked about what I saw and what it might mean. A few months before my twelfth birthday, I saw Mammy’s death in a dream. It terrified me and I didn’t want to tell anyone. I was afraid that if I spoke it, it would come true. The following morning at breakfast Mammy sensed that I was upset about something and eventually got me to talk. She assured me everything would be okay. A few weeks later she became quite ill and her health declined rapidly. She eventually agreed to go to the hospital, but she never came home. My beloved Mammy was gone.
The loss of my grandmother was not only a shock but it became a huge psychic wound for many years. I secretly blamed myself for her death, believing that somehow seeing the vision of her death in my dreams had made me responsible. The pain of losing her was insurmountable. Although I knew my parents loved me, Mammy Jones was the person in my life who really saw me for who I was.
As a teenager I couldn’t deal with my gifts without Mammy to guide me, so I wandered in the underworld for a long time. In my confusion, hurt, and grief, I ignored my sensitive nature as much as possible. I developed several dysfunctional patterns for dealing with life, including addiction to substances, which resulted in a near-death experience before I was twenty years old.
The addictions turned out to be blessings in disguise, eventually leading me to a path of soulful sobriety in my late twenties. I found that I was a natural wounded healer. I became an addictions counselor, but I sensed there was something more than what was being offered in mental health and treatment centers for these folks who were a lot like me. I understood that many of them were using substances to block out emotional pain and repress sensitive spiritual souls. I was determined to discover what that “something more” was--not only for me but for others seeking lives that were addiction free, yet not restricted to the status quo.
This yearning led me to a path of radical transformation, reclaiming my lost soul parts through the healing power of breathwork and eventually entering the shamanic path. Through breathwork journeying I began to feel a call toward Native American, Mayan, and other indigenous teachings. A Cherokee friend and teacher encouraged me to listen to a guided journey every day with the intention of finding a grandmother spirit who could help me heal my grandmother wound and give me the guidance to truly find myself and walk my path. During one of those journeys, a Native American grandmother I had never seen before came into my vision. She held my head in her lap and stroked my hair, calling me Gentle Star Wolf. I saw her face as clear as day, and she felt incredibly real. When I came out of the journey, I was not sure if she was someone real whom I needed to find in this realm or if she was a
guide from the spirit realm.
It was to be several years until I tracked her down in the physical world--or perhaps it was she who tracked me down. One day I traveled to the Cattaraugus Indian Reservation in upstate New York. As I got out of my car, Seneca Wolf Clan Grandmother Twylah Nitsch opened the door to her back porch and walked toward me. Taking hold of my shoulders, she looked penetratingly into my eyes and said the words that would change my world forever: “What took you so long?”
I looked back at her in shock. Even though there were others close by they ceased to exist in that moment. There was only the two of us, suspended beyond time and space. The whole world went into slow motion and eventually I found my voice, saying, “It would have helped if you had told me your name and where you lived.”
“You were supposed to use your Wolf nose, eyes, and ears to sniff me out,” she said with a wry smile. Then she added, “I gave you a name. What is it?”
I answered shyly in a questioning manner, “Star Wolf?”
Her face lit up and she said very firmly, “Yes. That’s right. Now come on inside and let’s get to it.”
There have been many shamanic moments of death, rebirth, and wisdom given to me during this life journey of almost sixty years. But my epic, “no turning back” moment came that day on Grandmother Twylah’s porch when time stood still and I looked into the eyes of the woman whom I had seen in my vision. Up until that point I waivered back and forth between faith and doubt about my mystical experiences and psychic gifts. When I met Twylah, the worlds collided and all doubt fell away. From that moment forth, I was able to embrace my shamanic spirit and calling.
Table of Contents
AcknowledgmentsIntroduction: The Relevance of Shamanism
By Itzhak Beery
1 The Three Stages of Spiritual Unfolding
By Hank Wesselman
2 Shamanic Impact: From Child to Crone
By Dana Jefferson
3 Urban Shamanism: Treating Depression Using Shamanic Healing Practices
By Ellie Zarrabian
4 Shamanic Ecstasy
By Alberto Villoldo
5 The Call to Service
By Sandra Ingerman
6 Raptor Medicine: A Portal to Shamanic Beginnings
By Thomas J. Mock
7 A Mountain’s Light
By Ginny Anderson
8 Journey about Love Doctoring
By Katharine Weiser
9 A Most Extraordinary Vision on the Power Path
By José Luis Stevens
10 Into the Red Path
By Julián Katari
11 Mount Everest
By Jan Engels-Smith
12 Rappers Don’t Go on Meditation Retreats
By Bezi
13 Moon Struck
By Mama Donna Henes
14 A Lifetime of Awakenings
By Tom Cowan
15 Encounters with an Ally Plant
By Carol L. Parker
16 Call of the Ancestors
By Phillip Scott
17 There’s Been a Whole Lot of Grace
By Reverend C. Ayla Joyce
18 An Experiential Journey toward Trust
By Julie Dollman
19 Of Mountains and Men
By Rebekah Brandon
20 Shamanism in the Amazon
By Deborah Goleman Wolf
21 A Visit from Apó Lákay
By Lane Wilcken
22 The Non-Dualism of Shamanic Psychotherapy
By Joseph E. Doherty
23 Baby, I Was Born This Way
By Linda Star Wolf
24 Shapeshifting: From Dying to Apprenticing
By John Perkins
25 A Doorway Called Africa
By Misha Hoo
26 Sacred Journey of a Lifetime
By Holly Gray Schuck
27 A Pathway to Transformation
By Raymond Nobriga
28 Shamanic Awakening
By Nadiya Nottingham
29 A Luminous Re-Membering
By don Oscar Manuel Miro-Quesada
30 My Shamanic Initiation: The Fire of Transformation
By Mona Rain (Smith)
31 The Power Animal Experience
By Debra Fentress
32 Pandora’s Box
By Wendy Whiteman
33 Sacred Place
By Peter Brown
34 The Awakening of a Medicine Woman
By Katherine Gomez
35 Warrior Wisdom
By Colleen Deatsman
36 Spirit Chases Me
By Randall Sexton
37 Shamanic Impact
By Niramisa Weiss
38 Pine Spirit Medicine
By Rita Baruss
39 Communal Song and the Art of Healing
By Elizabeth Cosmos
40 Temples of the Earth
By Zacciah Blackburn
41 Direct Dialogue with Mother Earth
By Michele Gieselman
42 The Calling
By Michael Drake
43 The Gifts of Shamanism
By Pamela Albee
44 The Story of a Bear
By Leon Sproule
45 The Soul Union Community
By Johanna Lor Rain Parry
46 The Slow Build of a Shamanic Path
By Lewis Mehl-Madrona
47 Northern Lights
By Lynn Andrews
Epilogue: Back Where It All Began
By Itzhak Beery