I love the Internet. It has completely changed the way we communicate with one another, and created open doors for ideas and interactions that we couldn’t have dreamed of a few decades ago. When previously I’d have had to write you a letter or produce a flyer to let you know what I was thinking or what classes I am offering, now I only need think about it for a few moments, hit the keyboard, and you are informed and I’ve communicated.
Another thing I like about the Internet is that I can read what you are thinking, as you wend your way to my web site. I’ve invited Google, in the form of Google Analytics, to tell me how people arrive at my web site. So it tells me a lot of general, not specific, information about who is looking at my site and how they found it. For example, I can see that my average viewer spends over 3 minutes reading my site. And I’m glad of that because one purpose of my site is to help you understand healing, coaching, Reiki, shamanism and the possibilities they offer for your life. Another thing it tells me is how you, my anonymous reader, might have arrived at my site through a Google search. And those are the really intriguing bits of information Google feeds to me. The most fascinating Google search that brings you, dear Reader, to my site is this: Is Shamanism Real?
I like this question because it is what I asked, myself, for several years. As I intently studied shamanism and began a shamanic practice, I found great joy in it. But I asked myself at least daily: is this real, or are you making it up? I decided at the time that it didn’t matter to me whether it was real or not; it made me happy. And yet, there was a nagging doubt in me: how crazy is it to engage in a practice I don’t even know to be real?
As often happens in shamanic practice, a wild synchronicity eventually embraced me. In a healing session with the woman who was then my teacher, she began to describe a place in the “spiritual realm” that was my “power spot.” A power spot is a place that a shamanic journeyer visits routinely—perhaps every day. In a power spot, one gathers ones power, establishes connection to ones helping spirits, and prepares to embark on shamanic work in a strong way. And my then-teacher described in perfect detail my very unusual power spot, a spot that couldn’t be found in our world, only in a spiritual world where our rules of physics, biology, geology and botany do not apply. It is a spot so peculiar in its specifics as to be outside of the realm of ordinary reality.
It was that moment with my then-teacher in which I began to understand that this shamanism thing is real. I was floored, and my life was changed forever. Since that moment, I’ve had many moments in which the effectiveness, the reality, of shamanism and its practices have stepped starkly forward. Yes, dear reader, shamanism is real. It exists for us, and it is a technology that helps us to heal, to step more fully into wholeness, into our destinies, and into relationship with the Divine. I invite you to invite shamanism into your life.