The
shamanic path of presence is a spirtual practice that comes
from the heart and goes to the living heart
of every relgion and tradition. whether its Buddhism or
Native American
spirituality, Sufism or an Aboriginal Walk
About, orthodox mystic Chritianity or Celtic Paganism.
There can only be one presence with many names: God, Great
Mystery,Yaweh,
the absolute, "I am that I am".
Most
of us spend a great deal of our lives driven by unfulfilled needs
that we have lost touch with. Some of them go back so
far they are
primordial, even if it is reflected in a past life or childhood.
The point is, its still going on, right now. They are
hungry ghosts within us. They pull us away from being present into
mind realms of past and future. they separate us fromt he presence
that it is right now.
So what
is presence? And how does it differ from plain awareness?
I'm just
going to give you two types of awareness. This is not meant to
be all encompassing. You can have an awareness of the
consequences
of your actions. Or you can have an awareness of the inner and
outer, ordinary and non-ordinary, psychic, emotional,
physical or what-have-you
world. In this case you might be aware of the wind blowing, your
breathing, a bird flying above your head, your stomach
gurgling,
a tightness in your chest because you just lost money in the stock
market, or you might be getting this hit about corn commodities,
or that person standing in front of you is in pain and doesn't
even know it. Or upon entering a certain landscape that
something texturally
has changed on a feeling tone level. So awareness is a particular
way of using our mind to open us up to experience and
is a necessary
step toward presence. It gives us a small measure of presence.
Now the essence of presence
is becoming. From awareness we take a further step into
becoming.
Awareness is a choice and becoming is a stronger choice to let
the world in, to invite it in. This is both the inner and
outer world.
If you have lost someone dear to you, you allow yourself to feel
that loss. Notice the energy around it: it might be a complex
of
fear, anger, and sadness. The mind has a memory, you notice the
feeling in your body and you become it. This means you lean
into
it and you breath into it. You let it into your core like a shimmering
breeze. You relax and you let yourself tremble, cry or ache.
It's
only energy. You become the great crcle of being thorough whci
this energy is moving at that moment.
This becoming is practiced
with all things that enter our awareness and as we expand
our field
of awareness, we expand the depth of our becoming, the circle of
our being.We become the world. And since we already are the
world, we
only reclaim
what
we already are anyway. We reinspire it into ourselves. We give
it permission to live within us. We become a shimmering
leaf, the flight
of an eagle, a raging river, our hurt and anger, the trembling
in our heart, the ant that we crush, people we dislike,
noises that
bother us. In the act of becoming we are led into the pulsing heart
of all things. We are led into a dynamic state of presence.
So presence
is a rootedness into the depths of your soul that roots you into
the depths and the heights and the center of all things.
This is some of the teachings
and foundation that help support the Soul Journey shamanic session.
This is what I am doing when I am journeying for somebody. I am
entering the person's mythic landscape and becoming every detail
of it right down to the feel of wet grass under my/their feet or
a sky full of clouds. While at the same time becoming the dynamic
gestalt of feeling images that are like pieces of the soul calling
out for recognition. I recognize them and revivify them. I breathe
them in and become them and let them speak through my body and voice.
This not only sets them in motion regardless of what the person
I am working on is doing but it also allows them to become their
own lost world of soulfulness.
Awareness, becoming and
presence permeate every aspect of the Work. It is the main
component
of what I am doing and what I am inviting people to do. All of
these levels of becoming
carries us into presence, the presence which equals soul-full-ness,
which is spirit living fully through the body.
