Blogging Shamanic Shifting

Shamanic ways for solving everyday troubles & widening wellness

Tue, 23 Jun 2009 00:51 GMT

I am a neighborhood and universal modern shaman (with a small 's') who stands aside from a lot of things. I do my best to stay centered on my purpose - helping anyone I can - and usually I steer clear of, and journey WAY around, a lot of energy draining controversy.

Staying centered, while sanding aside, while steering around - yet pausing at breathtaking edges now and then - gets easier and funner now that I have developed the knack into a shamanic dance-habit. Of course, writing about it breaks this healthy habit, briefly.

I practice shamanic ways and hypnotic ways for self-change aside from any and all western medical (also called allopathic) diagnoses and interventions - and aside from most New Age and other kinds or schools of complements or alternatives as well. I chose - years ago - to work under my ministerial and consulting hypnotist credentials rather than my (still valid, for the record) Wisconsin licensed clinical social worker credential. And I shrink away from, without opposing or attempting to debunk (though I have my doubts), much of what is often called complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) as well.

Because: Given any being or situation calling for help and change, I have found, over many years of practice, that when motivation, attitude, healthy lifestyle choices, and everyday troubleshooting are shamanized and/or addressed through hypnosis and related techniques such as self-hypnosis, guided imagery, relaxation, storytelling, and more, MAJOR life-shifts for the better happen, all without and beyond pathologizing what comes before me under any type of terminology.

This 'everyday help for ordinary problems' approach can complement most, if not all, standard, government-licensed medical or mental-health, but is not offered as a replacement for any of it. And this simplifying, ordinary-reality centered approach can complement most complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) as well. But as intentions go, complementing is near the bottom of my top 10.

I do not offer shamanic or hypnotic ways as complements or alternatives to anything. The methods I practice work best to change ordinary rather than pathological trouble patterns. Still, I hear back that beginning and ending with activating and enhancing wellness brings remarkable, lasting relief and renewal.

Shamanic session = I facilitate YOUR shamanic journey!

Tue, 09 Jun 2009 02:17 GMT

Image by Shamanic Shift via Flickr

As a neighborhood and universal shaman I can shamanic-journey on behalf of others, but my aim and emphasis is teaching and facilitating interior voyages for the knowledge and power to self- and reality-shift on purpose. Shamanic Shift Center is designed and kept as a portal for connecting to Spirit, and many find it to be a trance activating place. 'Hanging out' here for a while of interacting with the rocks, crystals, essential oils, art-play materials, books, percussion instruments, divination and meditation cards, theme shrines, and more, can be waking, awakening shamanic experience by itself.

Within this portal environment, I can share many older and newer ways and means to psychonavigate within, towards powerful new dreams and patterns, so you can bring back your own re-creative stories and energy-flows of change for the better. Besides drumming, chanting, dance, storytelling, and other adapted, universal shamanic ways, I facilitate soul travel with modern methods of consciousness-shifting, such as self-hypnosis and guided imagery.

There are as many ways to shamanic journey as there are spiritual adventurers. As with all prayer and meditation treatments, all the spiritual healing and transforming is accomplished by Spirit and Spirits, as each journeyer understands those words and concepts. When you engage in a shamanic session YOU become a shamanic shift center and living portal for inward spiritual change to grow into outward, everyday changes.

More ways of a neighborhood shaman

Sat, 30 May 2009 02:45 GMT

Image by matt.searles via Flickr

I am listing several characteristics of a neighborhood shamanic practice to better understand my own ruminations around this topic:

Tendencies (not hard-fast rules) of a Neighborhood Shaman...

-- Individualizes a healing intervention for each being, place, or situation at hand; does not go by a recipe book (even if familiar with several)

-- Re-directs the current energy-flows and patterns into a one-of-a-kind shamanic shifting process instead of attempting to fit symptoms or signs into theories or formulas

-- Shamanizes indirectly (yet cleverly) catalyzing and facilitating purposeful change through arts and entertainment with symbolic, mulit-level songs, dances, and stories and little or no direct advising or suggesting

-- Draws from the natural and social support present in ordinary reality on the block or around the corner rather than seeking the exotic or weird or faraway as remedies (through nothing is off-limits)

-- Views problems and challenges first as the natural consequences of changeable behaviors and longstanding habits rather than deep-seated pathologies or fatal flaws

-- Focuses most upon changing what can be changed here and now and going forward rather than untangling past complexities (because a "change the things I can" and leave the rest for a while approach deepens awareness steadily and brings unconscious content to consciousness as needed and allows A LOT to be untangled and rewoven by Spirit and Spirits anyway, in harmony with the healing intention at hand)

-- Seeks and works to activate and enhance healing and transforming solutions already present within the presenting being, place, or situation

-- Develops her own techniques and methods

-- Works locally on behalf of the Earth and whole universe; most concerned with transforming this world for the better rather than transcending ordinary reality; shamanic shifts now by now, here by here, case by case, radiating healing outward through all space and time from this self and this neighborhood

-- Opens and keeps open a neighborhood center and circle as a conducive environment for all-of-the-above to happen on a small scale, day by day

Other approaches to shamanic ways may overlap or blend with this and one another: Traditional (seeking a direct link to indigenous spirituality or religion), New Age (merging with a blend of magical, mystical, metaphysical, and 'complementary and alternative' transforming and healing systems), Mainstreaming (aiming for recognition or licensing within the western medical model), and Large Group Awareness Training (the workshop and 'intensive' circuit).

Shamanic ways can bypass patterns and authorities!

Fri, 22 May 2009 01:59 GMT

Image by Todd Mecklem via Flickr

Let LIFE keep liberating Life! Let there be NO resting place for humankind. Let us adventure beyond all limits, boundaries, and edges of space-time.

Along with soul (or self) consciousness and language humans have evolved the need and the knack for seeking and finding patterns, meanings, bigger pictures...and higher authorities. We revere diverse celebrities and obey an array governors but our best, most authoritative, and absolute favorite higher authorities are idols, figments, or supernatural impossible beings who float forever above nature - and all the realms, levels, dimensions, and orders of the multi-verse of ALL THAT IS - who yet, through their called, chosen, (and so-called chosen) ministers, keep troubling us and our families, clans, bands, tribes, communities, and nations.

What frees us as a species seems to capture us again at every turn on the spiral path of life. The natural spiral of 'life freeing life' seems to slow to a torturous grind as ages pass. Some speculate or argue that evolution of sentient beings always leads to extinction or doomsday but I dream otherwise.

I live and teach shamanic ways in response to a persisting, perplexing, inner (inborn?) calling to 'minister' (in Mystery, Spirit, or Whatever...?) because the ways of shamans offer the most life-shifting, soul-freeing, authentic POWER with the least built-in necessity to bow down to authorities, lesser or greater, or to follow traditional patterns, organized or unorganized. Paradoxically, religions offer a branching Tree Of Life of interior ways of relating to reality, yet the ways of religions eventually turn these connections into comfortable niches where further growth is slowed and stunted, or even nip the buds of new spiritual growth into dead ends.

Here I am the founder of a church (by the IRS definition) or 'religious institution' (by my insurance agent's definition) or center and circle (as I say) of shamanic ways who does not want to offer religion at all, who aims to catalyze religion-free zones and stir up small circles of churchless spirituality. No, I do not even want to offer 'spirituality' because this softer sounding word is being used more and more to refer to personal or unorganized or new (or 'new old') religions or belief systems or other patterns of Complementary and Alternative healing or transforming that are currently, quickly, and relentlessly being chiseled into stone anyway.

Welcome...But this list isn't active now...Yet....

Wed, 20 May 2009 01:16 GMT

Welcome anyway! I have already advised list members to change their settings to web only (no emails). Because I approve requests to join when they appear to

Universal neighborhood shamanism is my open-ended mission

Wed, 13 May 2009 02:18 GMT

Image by Dru! via Flickr

Where is this shamanic life journey leading? A shaman opens and keeps open connections between the ordinary and non-ordinary aspects of all that is for the purpose of catalyzing life-shifts for the better. That is what I am aiming to be and do.

A shamanic understanding paradoxically encompasses and creatively combines, yet does not confound or confuse, diverse views and ways of experiencing reality - scientific, artistic, philosophical, and religious (and all the branches and subcategories thereof). I am called to practice shamanic ways as the most open, flexible, freeing spirituality and life-way possible.

A 'neighborhood shaman' lives a mission to embody this bridging of the outward, measurable material and the inward, intangible spiritual worlds as an individual center of ongoing shamanic shifting, of self and reality at once, on behalf of a particular local environment. For me, this is best done on a small scale, one to one, shift by shift.

A neighborhood shaman is also a 'universal shaman' who dreams up then radiates, flows, breathes, and acts out local changes to shift the whole universe, eventually, from the inside-out. A universal shaman is free to adapt to the present situation at hand for healing any transformation method, ancient to contemporary as well as invent new ones. This approach is the opposite of any sort of traditionalism or dogma or codified belief system.

I started living full-time, on purpose, as a neighborhood universal shaman over 20 years ago. I see more and more practitioners and organizations in the worldwide revival of shamanic ways developing and mixing and matching various characteristics of Large Group Awareness Trainings (LGATs) and related methods such as NLP, New Age or Wiccan or indigenous peoples' religions, esoterism and the occult, Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CAMs), and mass (or 'viral') marketing, all of which is OK by me.

But I am moving away from all of this, as I am pushed by Spirit and Spirits, towards "I don't know what to call it yet or ever!" except universal and neighborhood shamanism. So I am attempting to write an eBook about this when I can barely blog about it, LOL!

Am I being called to fly from this crossroads?

Tue, 05 May 2009 11:04 GMT

Image by Transguyjay via Flickr

Who wants to host a contemporary resident neighborhood shaman...and Tortoise Cat colleague...and a rock and crystal 'garden' shamanic prayer-place? I have kept office and residential space-time in this building on the corner of N. Astor and E. Knapp Streets on the east side of Milwaukee, WI since 1997. This location was chosen by Spirit and Spirits but now it feels like a spirit-nudge to fly onward has begun.

So far no specific flight destination has been revealed. Only a few fleeting hints have flashed through my dreams.

I have begun questing a vision of the best next space-time coordinates for Shamanic Shift Center. Maybe this nudging into flight will turn out to be symbolic, metaphorical, psychological, and spiritual as in the past. Maybe a material move to another property and landlord in this neighborhood will be shown...or maybe a farther adventure.

I hope, if a physical move is being inspired, that the new location will have a few parking spaces officially or unofficially available nearby to encourage more visitors! Cheaper rent is not on my brainstorming list of attributes of the ideal new abode - just an affordable, competitive, and fair $amount-per-square-foot, depending...upon many variables.

My (as Companions Circle's and its central project Shamanic Shift Center's) current neighborhood and universal shamanic non-profit (501.c.3 approved) mission is:

-- keeping open a modern-day shamanic sanctuary and 'churchless church' (facilitating direct connecting with Spirit, allowing anyone to bypass religions, belief systems, and institutions)

-- ongoing shamanic shifting of self, neighborhood(s), world, and universe towards the better through daily and seasonal prayer-treatment and energy-healing periods and cycles

-- keeping demystified, universal, original, contemporary shamanic teaching and consultations accessible through open-ended, individualized mentoring (the oldest-fashioned 1 to 1 way)

-- non-sectarian spiritual, supportive, and self-change counseling or coaching (not necessarily 'shamanic') for anyone who needs and wants it

-- ceremonial and sacramental officiant services such as marriage (and handfasting and LGBT unions until laws change), dedications, consecrations, initiations, blessings, baptism, creating sacred space-time, rites of passage, and more

-- and even more...that is, some other functions and things that are not occurring to me while I write this

So I am blogging today about this quest and question - to fly or stay here - to open up my mind, heart, and gut more, to whatever I am being nudged towards. Bring it on, Spirit and Spirits!

Another nudging I am (still) noticing...Find a creative, do-able way to renew my ministry to General Mitchell International Airport (GMIA). While I worked there for several years, pre- and post- 911, I was able to provide ad hoc travelers' aid and unofficial chaplaincy services...and entertain spiritually.

Maybe I'm being called back to the GMIA main concourse, to hang-out 1 day/week. I have been shamanic journeying on this question since I left formal employment there for full-time self-employment here.

I see myself in the middle of the airport, being of service again, in impromptu and unexpected ways, through brief encounters as before, but differently, with many more restrictions since I no-longer work on on the premises. I know I am also called to write a book, eventually, about my 'shamanic' (and exciting and funny) ground handling (airport 'ramper') experiences. Being there regularly might help move that cause out of the dream stage.

Neighborhood shamanism and networking

Sun, 03 May 2009 06:20 GMT

Image by Targuman via Flickr

Through Shamanic Shift Center is Milwaukee I practice neighborhood shamanism - connecting with Spirit and Spirits in, as, through, and on behalf of beings, places, and situations closest to and spiraling outwards from the corner of East Knapp and North Astor Streets. Through online social networks I am being guided and nudged by Spirit and Spirits to find and shamanize within internet neighborhoods too.

I decided to stop resisting and go ahead and activate and re-activate profiles on other social networks besides Twitter, the site where I began 'social networking' in ernest. I am finding and befriending (or 'following' where that is the term, though I always mean 'befriend') but I am NOT going to disconnect with anyone who connects than 'un-friends' or 'un-follows' me.

I will keep following back when followed and unfollow who unfollows only on Twitter. Everywhere else I will rove around in open-ended darkness or light, and befriend whoever I meet and whoever greets me, and remain a friend. Well, I mean that I intend to make and keep cyber-friendships with as many as I can, to keep growing cyber-neighborhoods, and keep learning more about all of this can mean.

I have no vision yet about goodnesses or blessings that may come of this. I know I cannot post daily updates on so many services. For now I am being guided to keep connections open and wait for signs of desireable potentials and possibilites to energize.

Of course every day is (an) Earth Day!

Thu, 23 Apr 2009 01:04 GMT

Image via Wikipedia

What I did for Earth Day 2009: Recycling is only one of the thousands of Earth Day action topics, easy to do and easy to pretend to do. This east side Milwaukee neighborhood is the abode of many professionals and college students, but recycling participation appears to be about 50-50, from what I saw yesterday.

I found hours of Earth Day activity just recycling what was carelessly or lazily (or even deliberately) tossed into the garbage bins or dumpsters around a few of my city blocks. This became my 2nd Earth Day 2009 action. My first action comes last in this post.

I enjoyed the dumpster diving exercise of removing many, many cardboard boxes and recyclable containers from the trash and the sidewalk near trash pick-up areas, separating out the contents (the liquids and food, the packing foam, the reusable items, and the just plain garbage), and breaking the cardboard down to size, and fitting everything into the appropriate, freshly emptied recycling containers. Then I donated some re-usable household items to a local thrift store and that was even more fun.

Maybe, I mused (both amused and not amused) these non-recyclers suppose that no one will ever know who they are after they hastily, wastefully, stash their stuff just any old which way in the trash collection area of their homes or offices. To me, the non-recyclers from this office building and the apartment building next door were easily identifiable from the items they tossed. But I wanted to get more done and stay happy so, deliberately, I stopped noticing evidence soon after I started.

I worked as a private detective for a little while and owned and managed cleaning services for many years and I build art from found objects as a shamanic shifting process, so to me, garbage sings out - and even dances - many sad and funny stories. Probably, many around this artist-infested neighborhood do see and hear as many signs and wonders in the garbage as I do, but I can tell that most around here try not to look twice at garbage or give it a second thought.

But, neighbors...! It does NOT matter that I know, now, how you practice helpful, healing therapies or study ways to make the world a better place or exclaim fervently "I believe in global warming...!" or similar (reduced to the) absurd words, but then toss the extra stuff that you bring across your thresholds of life in the big city just any old where you can get away with. And my opinion does not matter, really. You know, and god or ultimate reality as you understand it knows, and the Earth knows...and will tell all eventually!

Now a similar message goes out from me to you several folks I see regularly, sitting, idling your car engines for 5-15 'extra' minutes, waiting for whatever happens next in your life, unapproachable and irreproachable, listening to tunes or tapping on a laptop or PDA inside, with an 'endangered species' license plate and/or green-themed bumper sticker(s) advertised politically-correctly outside. Yes I see you, haha.

And HEY YOU, the sizable subset of you engine idlers who also smoke inside your sacred vehicles (your cars and your bodies) during these several precious, stolen moments of exhaust emitting solitude...Yes, YOU ARE being watched as you flick your ashes out that thin window crack onto the face of our Mother Earth. But - oh yeah, reality check - I am not worthy to throw stones at you or anyone for my aim is far from perfect yet and I still live in a glass house myself!

Every little, personal, local action flows into Gaia's universal, creative, chaotic cauldron and new patterns of global and cosmic effects (upon us and generations of children) are always, in all ways emerging, sooner and later, through, in, and as ordinary, measurable matter, energy, space, and time. We can fool ourselves and most of our neighbors and colleagues, day by day, temporarily, but no one fools Mother Nature for even a single moment.

When I wonder how to 'live green' more deeply and most effectively I am humbled, awed, and terrified by the simplicity and complexity of it all - all the interconnecting, interrelating, and overlapping topics and sub-topics, issues, solutions, controversies, questions, and research that comes under the jumble of headings and headlines - environment and environmentalism, sustainability and conscious capitalism, ecology and eco-spirituality, climate change and global warming, and all the rest of so many more. I am happy and grateful for the easy, do-able, tiny actions I can live with every day while I keep learning, changing, and growing greener!

Pretending on purpose is a powerful shamanic technique so I shamanize daily over and around all green-washing I notice others or find myself still doing. I stop judging as soon as possible and start dreaming and visioning my and everyone's weak to strong green vibes transforming into healthy, balanced, vital, impeccable, fun restoring green living waves.

My first and last Earth Day 2009 action was going outside, walking around, noticing as much beauty and harmony as possible during this present, local, earth day. I resolve to keep doing this every coming earthy day.

Green shamanic dreaming

Tue, 21 Apr 2009 08:09 GMT

Image by neoliminal via Flickr

At the Friday night shamanic circle: I shamanic journeyed as I drummed for the others. I was seeking a healing, transforming, and divining vision of Green Synergy.

Our circle's Spring theme is Green Synergy. I desire the harmonious, beautiful re-unity of green flows and patterns through my self, this neighborhood, and the world. I expect new earthy, hearty, successful, going, growing, life sustaining, now enhancing eco-spiritual patterns and flows to show soon.

This shamanic journey became a deep, vivid, ecstatic dream! I climbed a tall Oak tree and it's branches grabbed and rocked me, swinging me in wider and wider arcs, until it hurled me powerfully into outer space then way beyond the middle worlds. I felt I was moving near light speed as I soared through several membranes - of dimensions, levels, and otherworlds - until I slowed enough to gaze around at glittering, non-ordinary starry expanses.

Soon I realized I was approaching a fantastical, improbable, and wonderful Green Cow Nebula. This Green Cow Nebula was dancing and singing. Maybe I will trance-dance later to remember more of this improbable performance.

The spiral-whirling, vibrating vortex mouth of this celestial green cow drew me nearer and nearer then sucked me in whole. But soon I began to be chewed to bits by titanic teeth and primal forces. Then I was swallowed and a long, energetic, pulsing digestive process began.

This Green Cow Nebula has 13 stomachs, one for each color of the rainbow (with its contrasts, complements, shades, and tints flashing though) and 3 extra stomachs which appeared to feature green to blue-green wavelengths and lush vegetation, and the final (finale) stomach full of single, double, triple, and quadruple rainbows that were also rivers or bridges or ships and many other shifting shapes! I passed through all of these stomachs and on and on through a resounding, disorienting darkness...until...Well, let me put it this way....

A sudden, stupendous, blast of WIND puffed me all the way back to ordinary reality, where I was delighted to find I was still drumming for the Friday night shamanic circle!

A green shamanic costume, of many shades, tints, and intensities

Thu, 16 Apr 2009 07:48 GMT

Image by jmtimages via Flickr

Our circle is shamanizing Green, in green, all April! Changing reality for the better though costume and color shifting is another of the more fun ways of taking shamanic action around a situation in need of help.

Earth Day is April 22. Wisconsin Senator Gaylord Nelson instituted this holiday of awareness and environmental teaching in 1970. Over the years Earth Day has become more and more political and social activist.

But there was already the 'Vernal Equinox Earth Day' being celebrated around the world at the tipping points of northern hemisphere mid-Spring or southern hemisphere mid-Autumn, the traditional and seasonal periods of spiritual and material transition and transformation, of beginnings and endings, of reaping and sewing. At a UNESCO conference on the environment in 1969 peace activist John McConnell introduced the concept of celebrating, officially, a global, equinoctial Earth Day. This other Earth honoring holiday was celebrated in many cities and communities in the United States and elsewhere during the 1970s and became the United Nations Earth Day.

My response to there being two Earth Days is "Hooray, TWO Earth Days!" But having two Earth Days seems like less rather than more to many and has generated controversy and division among green-folk.

I researched and found out that, among Green Folk, there are light greens, lite greens (as in green-washers), dark greens, and bright green (technogaian) environmentalists. I'm sure there are more kinds of greens besides these. So a Spring 2009 theme for our circle is GREEN SYNERGY.

Let us costume ourselves re-creatively, inside and out, in many tints, hues, saturations, and brightnesses of green. Let us re-unify green wavelengths, frequencies, and energies within each of ourselves in our shamanic dances, songs, and stories, each in our own ways. Let us splash green's complementary and contrasting colors into the mix, too - intentionally, playfully, and powerfully.

Happy Spring Holy Days Everyone

Sat, 11 Apr 2009 00:01 GMT

Hi Everyone, Since this group/circle is mostly dormant I decided to post an update (like I did just before at Shaman Fools) to save it from being deleted and

Happy Passover (continued), Holy Saturday, and Easter (and an update

Fri, 10 Apr 2009 23:29 GMT

Happy, fun Spring, Everyone, Spring shows and tells it all without the liturgical follies - but it's ALL fun to me. Happy holy days to all! Most of our

Great expectations in the mythic holy weeks of April

Wed, 08 Apr 2009 03:06 GMT

Image via Wikipedia

April, the month of great expectations: That is what I, Teal Talking Raven, am calling it this year. I know that this Spring might be called a season of destruction and death for all the recent catastrophes and killings in this country and around the world, but I choose to focus on redemption.

Western Christian Holy Week which began on Palm Sunday, April 5th, overlaps Jewish Passover which begins at sundown tonight, April 8th, and lasts until next Wednesday, April 15. I like to look for resonances and correspondences between holy days across religions and traditions. So I sit alone and ponder this generous week of holy days.

In my shamanic prayer-shifting for the best reality and world for all, the Holy Week themes of 'unexpected shifts' and 'extremes' (such as from ecstasy to despair and back to victory) and 'great expectations' are juxtaposing entertainingly with Passover's themes of 'freedom' and 'signs and wonders' and 'exodus from exile'. Sacred eating, transformational dying, power shifting miracles, and traveling companionship going forward to a better new life are the attention and energy patterns I notice being woven and flowed onward through both myths.

Image by geoffandsherry via Flickr

By myths I mean great transformational stories told and passed down among whole peoples, that happen on many levels, beyond ordinary-reality histories. 'Myth' is one of my favorite paradoxical words, meaning all at once, It never happened AND It happened more than one way AND It keeps on happening in every possible way.

Real myths are fantastical yet they are ultra-true. A myth is a Big Dream that keeps on coming true forever, through individual and worldwide circumstances and events. The more myths get debunked the more they come true, through sub-atomic quantum to universal cosmic level ordinary, extraordinary, and non-ordinary means.

Anyway, I find myself rambling. So I shall close after adding that after this mystical, magical week (with bonus days) of wondering over spiritual and natural Mysteries of life and Spring and everything, I hope to arise and go outside and find myself amid much warmer days. In my older age of becoming as a child so I can enter Heaven I also want to be able to stay outside longer to bask and play here on Earth.

Hungry spirals haiku

Tue, 07 Apr 2009 14:36 GMT

Hungry Spirals Haiku
by Teal Talking Raven

Life's spirals eating

us alive, alive, alive...

Nothing can stop them!

Nom, nom, nom, nach, nach...

delicious...equisite...YUM!

Spring the relentless

Hungriest season,

eat my heart out, why don't cha?!

Yes...I'll die laughing.

Celebrating sea gulls on winds of changes

Tue, 07 Apr 2009 12:24 GMT

We visited Milwaukee again this weekend! Every visit we say it might be our last - mostly because of our older ages.

One of my favorite Milwaukee walking shamanic journeys is to, around, and back from the Milwaukee Art Museum. I usually connect with many favorite bird spirit allies along the way.

The near freezing wind gusted against me mightily but I plodded on because road trips like this are so rare. Chammy had gone to the Milwaukee Public Museum (his favorite) instead, with our friends and neighbors, a much younger, lovely, thoughtful, generous couple we had hitched a ride with.

So my dear Chammy stayed warm while increasing his scientific knowledge while I tramped around in the weather. I have never enjoyed museum exhibits because I long to see 'artifacts' still in sacred use or natually decaying.

The sky shifted from blue to gray and back again many times. The grasses were half brown, half green. Bright green Tulip and other Spring bulb sprouts had grown to 5-6 inches high already.

We arrived Friday night for the 7pm Shamanic Shift Center circle, then stayed at the Astor Hotel across the street. After coffee and rolls in the hotel's charming little east facing tea room we set out on our separate ways, me bundled up in 3 layers.

Saturday was partly sunny and chill and the clouds had won over the sky by the time we rejoined our friends. Chammy doesn't like Daylight Savings Time but (partly) because of it we had scenic dusky views most of the way home.

Here Spring springs without any troubles

Tue, 07 Apr 2009 08:50 GMT

Image by Sascha Grant via Flickr

Maybe Spring is the longest season even though it seems to spring up on us! Spring begins before the Vernal Equinox, way back on some secret day during February, as soon as the first warmer, that is warm instead of cold, teaser day dawns, delights, and dusks. As soon as that happy surprise strolling-around-in-shirtsleeves day happens I know Spring is underway, though mostly hidden underground, volcanically bubbling life around and upwards within seeds and roots.

Spring 2009 unfolded in a series of catastrophes for many around the nation and the world, showing how violent and furious life can be. A steady series of economic, financial, and social blows seemed to match an unremitting sequence of large scale or acute Nature traumas - fires, floods, blizzards, earthquakes.

Climate and other earth changes (no matter what the causes) are certainly bringing on worsening ecological distresses and accelerating the extinction of living beings. This energy of troubled elements calls out to me for creative redirection.

Image by nimboo via Flickr

Life for us in this seeming refuge called southeastern Wisconsin stayed comparatively calm and safe but I could feel the blows and shocks from afar reverberating underfoot and within soul. Visits to nearby Milwaukee show me how much even light pollutes earth's ecosystems and severely attenuates humankind's view of the night sky and its inspirational, encouraging, beckoning planets and stars, the ancient life-adventure navigation beacons that used to help us reach beyond all apparent arising limitations.

How do I re-create and resolve these disturbing patterns within myself as a shamanic death and resurrection prayer? I take ordinary-reality action through charitable relief and social change efforts as much as possible then I wait.

I sit and take in as much as I can of what is and breath and dream on it. Then I stroll and imagine on it.

For every scenario of suffering that appears I superimpose and transmit one of this haven's vibrant, beautiful images. Who knows if or how this is effective? If it changes me, it changes the universe by that much, is my conviction, and some days only my 'act as if'.

Nightly whirlwind prayer circles around the earth

Mon, 06 Apr 2009 01:30 GMT

Image via Wikipedia

An opt-in mission for Spring: Since the 24 hours of Earth Hour 2009, March 27-28th, a circle of three within our loose net of circles has been shamanic journeying around the world nightly, just before dropping into sleep, together in Spirit and shamanic states of consciousness, though apart in ordinary-reality. Our purpose is helping work wonders behind the scenes of all kinds of troubled situations, individual to global, wherever help is being called for, without having to know specifics.

The March 27th Friday night circle's whirlwind, pulsing wave, kaleidoscopic, round-the-world in rainbows shamanic journeys for Earth Hour, which were more like wild rides, were calling for more journeying on the journeys. But few answers or specific messages have been received since about what we envisioned and all we continue to see, hear, and sense with all our senses. There is only the understanding that we can opt in and continue these travels for a season as self and world prayer-shifting.

From the powerful energy of these voyages, I sense the involvement of many more shamanic shifters. It feels to me as if a universal circle of shamanizers is revolving with us, circles of circles of circles inter-spiraling. Our little circle may be flowing and blowing as an eddying stream of prayer and healing within a momentous current that keeps on welling and rising up as the life forces of bands of benevolent beings from everywhere join in.

The theme for the April 3rd Friday night circle was passage through the waters of death, dying, new life, and resurrection and onward as the spirit winds of change. For western Christians who celebrate the yearly liturgical cycles and stories this week is Holy Week.

My theme for Lent, the 40-day (or so) season of lengthening day light, has been lightening up. This coming holy week is my chance to recapitulate, re-activate, then release my Lenten thought, word, and action process.

All of space-time is always holy to shamanizers, naturally. Yet, paradoxically, it is powerful fun to single-out favorites for special attention.

Earth Hour 2009 Shamanic Journeying

Sun, 29 Mar 2009 12:30 GMT

Image via Wikipedia

Earth Hour question and quest: Was Earth Hour a cop out or greener-than-thou badge more than an effective or symbolic vote for earth? As usual there was plenty of discussion on Twitter around this question and around Earth Hour in general.

I am sure there was almost equal praising and panning of Earth Hour 2009 throughout social networks, forums, and blogs. Earth Hour was March 28, 8:30 - 9:30pm, anyone's time (and space) zone, and the global activity is turning out the lights. Then individuals and groups often planned other special activities, everything from energy healing to star gazing.

I imagine it was just as much a cop out or brag for some as it was a vote and creative act to others. If Earth Hour generated pro and con discussions, and gave voice to many views, certainly it deepened self-awareness and broadened learning all around, and thereby benefited the overall environment of Earth, no matter what.

As our circle opened last Friday night, March 27th, we realized that it was Saturday afternoon, March 28th in New Zealand already, and that Earth Hour was only several hours away when we considered the planet as a whole. So we shamanic-journeyed into the energy-flow of Earth Hour 2009 seeking new and better understanding and visions of the best ways of healing whatever ails this Earth our island home.

When we returned to ordinary-reality we discovered: No one of us had received any clear visions or specific messages about exact solutions, though we each journeyed in Spirit with our helping Spirits, through what seemed like ALL of the possible elements and realms and combination thereof. Our journeys were long and kaleidoscopic and gave each of us a sense of energy-flow and pattern shifts happening without imparting any detailed information.

With the shamanic journey process it often happens that one needs to journey or dream further on the chosen intention or on related topics. The vagueness and uncertainty around the meanings of our shamanic journeys are NOT indications that our connecting with Spirit and Spirits for earth-healing purposes was in vain.

We agreed to continue our journeys on Saturday night at 8:30pm (CDT) as our circle's Earth Hour action, in addition to turning out our lights and powering-down. We shall circle again on Monday night by phone to share our stories of this second round of Earth Hour shamanic journeying.

I powered down for Earth Hour and turned off the porch and common area lights of this east side Milwaukee office building. Night was darker than usual in Milwaukee during Earth Hour anyway, whether many lights were switched off or not, but not clearer, due to a wild, blowing storm of heavy snowfall!

Study natural science and shamanic journey to nature spirits

Tue, 24 Mar 2009 13:09 GMT

Image by Hillary the mammal. via Flickr

Matter and spirit are one, and two, and this is a wonder that shall never cease! Wonder can shift me into shamanic states of consciousness. In our circle's shamanic practice wonder and wondering connect science and spirituality, as well as art and philosophy.

I study natural beings, places, and phenomena scientifically first, then shamanic journey in Spirit to their Spirits, and relate to their spiritual realities and dimensions. I engage my intellect around any given topic first, until I am shifted into shamanic ecstasy by wondering and wonder.

Art comes next as I act out my shamanic experiences creatively, shifting back into ordinary reality. Philosophy brings me full circle as I continue to tie all of this together into higher, deeper wisdom, understanding, and knowing.

This is why so many of my Twitter tweets and Tumblr posts are links to science articles. I begin and end my shamanic journeying in space, time, matter, and energy.

Shamanic journeying the vernal equinox energy-flow

Sun, 22 Mar 2009 02:38 GMT

Image by j03 via Flickr

Shamanic Vernal Equinox: Our last Friday night shamanic circle happened on the day of the vernal equinox. The moment of the vernal equinox, when the Sun crosses the equator journeying northward, had happened much earlier, at 6:44am (CDT).

Three circle members who usually join in on Friday nights from their distances through intention and attention, had called to let me know they would be visiting in person. Then they called again to let me know they would be arriving about 45 minutes late.

None of our local circle members had called to let me know they would be attending. I already knew one neighborhood circle companion who attends very regularly would be away, spending more precious final days and hours with a dear dying friend.

The Friday night circle is usually small in numbers here at Shamanic Shift Center's sanctuary on the east side of Milwaukee but 20+ join in at a distance in Spirit, through non-ordinary reality, beyond limits of space and time, or even time zones, or even exact times.

So I decided to delay the formal circle opening until my visitors arrived. But well before dusk I opened the circle informally by walking around our neighborhood, greeting sprouting or budding plants, noticing as many signs of Spring as I could.

As the sun set, nearly due West, I reveled quietly yet ecstatically under the glowing sapphire sky and greeted Saturn, visible all March, and the Spring constellations, Cancer and Gemini, even though they wouldn't be visible until later in the evening. When it was 'mostly night' I went back inside, chilled and thrilled.

During the circle we shamanic-journeyed to re-dream and help redeem ongoing troubled world situations, of people, places, and events we see or hear or otherwise sense calling out for help, drawing our attention-spans to what appears to be extra suffering. The seasonal tipping of the balance towards Spring gave us an energetic boost.

I and several companions of our circle often pray shamanic shifting towards the better over media news as a regular spiritual practice. We notice current events then begin shamanizing soon to avoid getting caught up in taking sides or conjuring up shoulds. We ask Spirit and Spirits for a vision of healing for the situation of concern and all beings and places involved and then act upon what we receive.

At this circle our journeys took us in separate directions but ended with mask making. Each of us received a vision of a 'vernal equinox mask' with seasonal symbols and divisions.

My visitors were staying overnight in Milwaukee so we extended the circle past the usual telling of our shamanic journey stories and took a while constructing the masks we visioned. Mask making materials are always on hand here.

All four of our masks were divided into two main areas but not in the same way. Two masks were divided vertically, but one was divided horizontally, and one diagonally. All four masks included a penumbral or transitional area between a lighter and darker side.

After our masks were complete - or complete for the moment - we drummed, danced, and sang our closing of the circle as ceremony. When we close the circle as ceremony we visualize and express opening it outward into the world and activating and sending forth all the healing and transforming we received in Spirit.

March, Green Snake Month

Wed, 18 Mar 2009 05:02 GMT

Image by sssnole via Flickr

With the best of intentions Saint Patrick attempted to drive earth-centered green magic out of the 'good land' Erin or Ireland - which to me can be a metaphor for any land where I live and love. But already, before Saint Patrick's Day arrives each March 17th, sprouts, like eager, earthy green snakes start poking their heads through this land's thawing soil anyway.

Just for fun our circle decided to name March 'Green Snake Month' in honor of all kinds of green sprouts appearing now amid the chaotic looking, winter-worn, tattered, barren, or rotting remains of last year's cultivated or wild gardens. Gardens, cultivated or left wild on purpose, can also symbolize our lives, where we plant and grow dream-seeds.

Beginning stage buds are showing too, and some full-blown berries. Even though March looks - and often feels - like winter, I know Spring has sprung.

Naming March 'Green Snake Month' is also one more way to recall and renew shamanic shifting intentions to 'go green' in as many healthy ways as possible. Green stands for so many healthy thoughts and plans - going forward, growth, success, sustainability, and new life, to name a few of many more possibilites.

Green also stands for the plant realms of earth and the plentiful nourishment and myriad healing remedies trees, vegetables, flowers, roots, seeds, and herbs give humankind. When I remember Saint Patrick I decide to dream that this dedicated shamrock plucking preacher of the Christian trinity also incarnated re-creative green in his heart.

Recycling With Spirit

Thu, 12 Mar 2009 03:43 GMT

Image by Shamanic Shift via Flickr

To a shamanizer garbage has spirit and is spirit just as perfectly as everything else. I am challenged by the Spirit and Spirits of Garbage more and more often these days as I go about my business.

Shamanic journeys and the larger shamanic journey of my life recycle me through lower, middle, and upper realms of the non-ordinary as a matter of course. Then as I walk about this world I often find myself noticing garbage in new, re-creative ways.

Questions around what and how I throw-away or give-away whatever needs to shift onward arise daily, insistently. As a shaman-fool I have an especially intense calling to help shape-shift and reality-shift garbage, as goofy as it may sound.

Shamantic shifting garbage is practical and ecstatic - and crucial to my (and my world's) spiritual and physical health and development. And it is fun and laughter restoring powerful medicine.

Garbage and shamanic experience are connected essentially. Shamanic ways begin in ordinary reality - this everyday spacetime, matter, and energy that is often denigrated or rejected as if it were garbage in many spiritual traditions - then adventure many non-ordinary realms, dimensions, and orders through intentional dreams and active imagination, and finally and always end back in the community with transforming songs, stories, and gifts.

I, like many shamanizers, am often tempted to linger or dwell in magical and mystical states of consciousness, or in out of the way retreats such as deserts, forests, mountain tops, and forget about or detach myself from the troubles, ailments, and cares of this mundane, material, natural, cosmic, comic world. But shamans voyage to return. Shamans live as bridges, not only between the ordinary and non-ordinary, but between all kinds of the least and the greatest.

I am called to live shamanic ecstasy amid everyday situations, challenges, and events - to incarnate shamanic shifts toward better and best back in this neighborhood, on this planet. If I attempt to relate to Spirit and Spirits within the invisible and mysterious but turn away from Spirit and Spirits dwelling in people, places, scenarios, and things on earth, I am missing my mission.

One of the easiest methods of shamanic shifting garbage: I create shamanic masks and costumes from garbage, in the tradition of found art (or objet trouvé).

Sometimes I shamanic journey first on a healing or transforming intention, seeking a vision of a mask or costume that expresses my current concern, and then begin garbage collecting, guided by Spirit and Spirits. Usually I trance-dance while recycling garbage into shamanic art - such things as broken hubcaps, crushed or driven over plastic bottles, colorful bits of broken glass, discolored chunks of styrofoam, soggy or torn paper, and other mud smeared bits of 'this and that' that appear on my path.

On a visionary walk around several neighborhood blocks carelessly several tossed-away fragments of recent 21st century history will attract my attention subtly or suddenly. I greet and acknowledge each one, just as if I were considering a beautiful rock, shell, or leaf instead of a piece of trash. Then I ask each one to grant me permission to include it in the art ritual. Acknowledging, greeting, asking permission, and thanking can all be shamanic acts in themselves and are very important.

So, yes, I talk to garbage. This must be done in the spirit of child-like FUN, not of psychosis! I don't make a spectacle of myself either. I do the trance dancing indoors before, between, and after periods of walking and art-play. And the conversing happens within Soul.

After the mask or other costuming is complete I usually allow myself to be guided by Spirit and Spirits into prayer dancing and singing over my shamanizing intention. There are many ways of concluding the ritual and releasing the healing and transforming of it into the world for good.

This practice does not recycle all that much garbage. Also I realize that the recycling of garbage is only a small bit what it takes to live sustainably and harmlessly. This and other shamanic recycling techniques mainly recycle me and deepen my understanding of the 'ecology of me and my world' so I see naturally more ways to be and go green.

Hollowing self through rattling, dancing, and singing

Mon, 09 Mar 2009 01:51 GMT

Image via Wikipedia

Getting hollow again...Hollowing. Hollowing helps a shamanizer be an open connection for intentional reality shifting by Spirit and the Spirits. The heart stays full of sunlight so courage grows while the rest of the self empties and goes dark.

These weeks of Lent, the season for lightening up, I am playing with the contrasting vision of hollowing myself out, shifting out of me what needs to be released into universal re-creativity, becoming an empty cave with secret passage ways out of the mountain into new directions, or an empty tomb with resurrection escape hatches. Letting Spirit move, I have been shaking 'whatever needs or wants to go' within me loose through dancing and rattling, then singing into any new hollow space I notice.

When images arise before me on the cave walls I notice, give thanks, and dance and rattle there until the pictures or symbols break up or fade. When I encounter beings I dance with them until they melt down or fly away.

I allow this shamanic hollowing process to continue during my dreaming by stating that I am doing so when I lie down after the mid-night prayer period. I add this more specific intention to my ongoing practice of offering all my sleeping and dreaming to Spirit and Spirits for beneficial life shifting.

Non-ordinary connections wide open...Ordinary connections slower

Sun, 01 Mar 2009 18:17 GMT

The topic I am pondering today is connections. My internet connection has become tricky. I chose mobility over speed and now use a USB 3G AT&T laptop connect device called the Mercury. When I travel it works well with the 3G signal but here at my usual location there is usually trouble. This sanctuary is a radio wave dead-zone and that might be considered a non-ordinary connecting &os;feature&os; by some.

Here in this space I can get a more stable but slower 2G connection which allows me to browse but times out when I am using advanced blogging platforms. This post is a test of 2G here.

Or, I can pack up and stroll a few blocks to connect with WIFI (free many places or included with my plan if the WIFI is AT&T). Today I am amid planning a new strategy and routine, how to best reorganize my work day based around frequent short-distance travels to whereever I can set up shop and use WIFI to get my publishing and writing done - or maybe connect with the Mercury if I can find spacetime coorinates where it can pick up the faster 3G signal better. I cannot afford both DSL (or cable) and the mobile connection and I must have the ability to connect on the road. So...

With a name like Mercury, I might have forseen these challenges! Mercury is a trickster but connects happily and harmoniously while were traveling.

Where to find me and Shamanic Shift Center besides MySpace

Thu, 26 Feb 2009 08:05 GMT

Greetings - It's Elizabeth checking in at MySpace, for Shamanic Shift Center! The picture is of Tortoise Cat, my colleague, enjoying dreams of Spring in our sanctuary's mini-garden next to the east f...

Lent is the season of lengthening days for lightening up!

Wed, 25 Feb 2009 03:52 GMT

Image by MelodiousThunk via Flicker

Message from Spirit and Spirits to me: Lighten up now!

Overnight, between Mardi Gras a.k.a. Shrove Tuesday and Ash Wednesday in the Western Christian cycle, seemed a perfect while for a transformational fire and ashes rite. I incensed this space with Frankincense and Myrrh, drummed and chanted a while, then re-collected and wrote down on sheets of paper all lingering regrets, resentments, and shortcomings that showed up in my consciousness stream, for recycling, redirecting, and releasing into healing.

I did not spend many moments cogitating over any details so I would not bog myself down in this phase instead of shifting my attention towards visions of change for the better. I scribbled each item quickly on separate sheets of junk mail paper, not new sheets, so this ceremony would recycle used paper that arrived here also, and so there would be several or more hand written papers of odd sizes to twist into a symbolic sculpture, representing the life pattern(s) I am shifting.

With separate bits of paper of many textures, colors, sizes, and shapes this shamanic process becomes more-dimensional - much more than a 1-D list. No order of importance was designated as I released each marked paper to fall onto the stone circle in the sanctuary center. I let each one fall upon any of the sacred directions represented there. Then, I drummed and chanted another while before fashioning a rough, un-perfected sculpture as a symbolic container. I worked quickly, expressing gratefulness for the original beneficial intents behind each pattern to be shifted, and for all the learning to be retained.

Then I burned this hastily sculpted paper shape until it was ashes. Then I marked my face with its ashes and scattered the rest to the winds. My face felt like a shamanic mask then, painted with outward signs of inner shifts. Then I drummed and chanted again and shamanic journeyed for healing and transformation for myself and, as always, for all in the world and universe vibrating in resonance with me.

On this shamanic journey I was burned down to ashes also, then reconstituted by Spirit and Spirits, then given healing touch by many helpers, saints and angels. I was instructed to keep Lent as a period of lightening up. Lent does come from words meaning lengthening days, when life lightens up noticeably day by day. I sang and danced and drummed to conclude this ceremony during what might have been the darkest hour of the night.

There are many ways I can lighten up and I shall be living them starting now, over again, refined and renewed. I keep many seasons and holy days individualistically, as I am guided by Spirit and Spirits in my shamanic life-way, superimposing the yearly calendars of several religions and traditions and inventing ad hoc holy days. So there are as many days and seasons for recycling, renewing, and releasing as I need in my ongoing lightening up!

Comet Lulin with Saturn then Carnival

Mon, 23 Feb 2009 05:13 GMT

Image via Wikipedia

Hi! It's Teal, semi-retired blogger, here again. This weekend after southeastern Wisconsin's skies cleared, I, like others of this circle, spotted Comet Lulin through binoculars, during its present closet approach, about 38 million miles away (and already traveling on). I experience a deep childlike delight at such unusual, natural sights, even when I see but a faint wisp.

Now, even better, overnight, early tomorrow morning that is, folks under clear skies (and the almost dark Moon) who have access to a telescope might be able to see Comet Lulin with Saturn. I will be shamanic journeying for a confluence of Mardi Gras, Carnival, and Ash Wednesday transformational wisdom-power from this celestial coincidence.

The 24th of February is also the obscure, mysterious holy day Regifugium, the flight of the king (in Latin). This observance may be associated with the rites around sacred kings (or sovereigns, male or female), who played a shamanic role in the renewal of life for the land and the people.

Maybe the sacred sovereign was fleeing literal, physical sacrifice and a shaman-fool (clown as clone) had to play that part. Maybe Regifugium brings another job for a wise-fool, to sacrifice self yet live to tell the tale. This interpretation is only an imaginary speculation of mine, however.

This dream about the meaning of Regifugium came to me because this year it falls on the final day of Carnival, the celebration that means 'farewell to flesh' (also in Latin). So anyway, everyone: Happy Farewell to Flesh and Farewell to Tyrants (?) and Farewell to Comet Lulin!

Randi keep debunking and dowsers keep dowsing!

Sun, 22 Feb 2009 08:13 GMT

Quoting Randi speaks truth! | Bad Astronomy | Discover Magazine:I’ve already mentioned that my man Randi has started a new video series, but I wanted to call your attention to this week’s in particular. Randi is on his game here, funny and fierce and

Dawning shamanic journey portal of planets

Fri, 20 Feb 2009 17:10 GMT

Image via Wikipedia

Watch for a shamanic journey portal or vehicle of planets to appear at dawn Sunday or Monday!

I look to nature and the neighborhood for shamanic journey portals and vehicles to match my shamanizing intentions. Trees show many ways into the non-ordinary - downwards, upwards, or inwards. Hills and mountains or caves and tunnels all hold many perfect places for psycho-navigation and metamorphosis. Rivers (or storm sewers) can flow me into the spirit realms.

Twilight periods, dawn and dusk are especially conducive to consciousness and reality shifting. The horizon can be shamanic journeyed over and clouds can be ridden or merged with. Or an unusual stellar or planetary configuration might create a portal or vehicle for connecting with Spirit and Spirits.

At dawn Sunday and Monday, Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, and the Moon will appear in the southeast in apparent conjunction. If you can glimpse this gathering in the clear you can shamanic journey to or though this geocentric dream of convergence or allow new images for better life on earth to beam down from this beautiful sight.

Any remembered magical correspondences or mystical experiences relating to natural or neighborhood shamanic portals and prayer intentions can be used by Spirit and Spirits to give visions, gifts, or answers. But usually, lately, before I begin, I do my best to forget as much as I can of any and all such things.

Gazing deeply and intently into any given moment and any outward and visible sign thereof - element, rock, plant, animal, planet, or even human-constructed artifact - numbers or number juxtapositions or geometries might appear to you, attune you, stay with you, and form further shamanic links or gateways to Mystery, Spirit, and Shapeshifting. For shamanizers any number or combination of numbers can bring new connections between ordinary and non-ordinary for shamanic shifting purposes, according to resonance and the topic being shamanized.

Certain number configurations become meaningful to circles and eventually become popular. Shamanizing through number and geometry is best taught by Spirit and Spirits directly but writings on mathematics, number mysticism, numerology, and sacred geometry can give many hints.

Juxtaposing holidays for shamanic effect

Sun, 15 Feb 2009 13:31 GMT

Greetings from Teal!

Image by janusz l via Flickr

Juxtaposing holidays for shamanic effect has been a favorite shamanizing trick passed down through generations in my shamanic family. When holidays, across religions, traditions, and cultures, fall on the same day or close, I shamanize with a synergitic boost from the alchemical blending and brewing of both or all of their archetypal and symbolic energy-flow patterns. When the juxtapositions are the most paradoxical, the spiritual boost is the greatest.

On Chammy's and my calendrics blog we link to many web resources for finding and connecting as many holy days or holidays as possible. Earth Calendar and Wheel of the Year are good examples.

This shamanic holiday energy mixing can be done in non-ordinary reality through a shamanic journey with your usual helping Spirits to any or many of the Spirits of the days you are linking. Spirits of the days can be Spirits of elements, minerals, plants, animals, humans, otherkinds, angels, and more, of course.

Within the shamanic journey (or dream or meditation if that is how you enter shamanic consciousness and non-ordinary reality) methods and techniques are given by Spirit. My intention is always to bring back transformations towards the better and healings where they are most needed - and to restore fun.

We exchanged shamanic Valentine's Day masks

Sun, 15 Feb 2009 09:37 GMT

Image via Wikipedia

Happy V's Day, belated! Valentine's Day is tied to themes of fertility, courtly love, and martyrdom. Martyrdom?

Two or three or maybe 14 Saint Valentines lived during the Christian haydays, whose energy-flows and life patterns now seem merged. At least the first two Saint Valentines were martyrs to keeping the faith yet no one knows very much about any of them.

Maybe it was the vibrant red of the Eucharistic vestments and altar clothes that stand out and shout on feast days in honor of martyrs that helped tie this multicultually Pagan celebration of Spring's earliest happy hints, dreams, and imaginings of flowers and birdsongs to the rejuvenating effects of affairs of the heart and on through history into the color our Valentine's Day decore.

Anyway, this year Chammy and I mixed and commemorated all the themes and energy-flows of Valentine's Day by making each other Valentine's Day shamanic masks. Can you imagine that?

Any moment can be a shamanic moment

Fri, 13 Feb 2009 14:54 GMT

Image by nerie via Flickr

Any moment can be a shamanic moment when I practice intention remembering. When I'm amid a shamanic journey I can become distracted. But this does not detract from the power of the shamanic journey. I simply shift attention and energy back to non-ordinary reality and recall and refocus upon my original shamanic journeying intention.

The power of a shamanic journey comes from Spirit and the Spirits and I provide intention, attention, energy-flow, and (first and last) permission for shifts for the better to shift into this world from the Spirit realms. As soon as I remember why I am shamanic journeying and continue the process, I usually notice that the distractions fit into the journey perfectly as part of the knowledge and healing or transforming power I am receiving from Spirit and Spirits.

Intention remembering along my ordinary reality everyday earth journey gets easier the more I practice doing it on shamanic journeys. Whenever I remember my purpose and reconsider any distractions happening in my world - challenge, trouble, detour, annoyance, or whatever - the spiritual powers and gifts of those seemingly sidetracked moments are revealed and given to me. This makes them the most power-full moments of the day.

Ordinary everyday shamanic journeys and jaunts

Fri, 13 Feb 2009 14:52 GMT

Previous assignment from Philosopher Zeno:

I am to create a piece of shamanic art blending symbols for "happy stoicism, compassionate cynicism, and serene skepticism" and await further instructions. [Here is the Link to that previous post.]

I did create a shamanic mask expressing those qualities to go with the healthy, invigorating drink I invented for Crates. I am still dancing with the mask and drink, amid this ceremonial shamanic attitude shifting process. When I am finished I will upload a picture.

New ordinary-reality mini-challenge: My 3G internet connecting device includes Trickster, in the software or the hardware - probably in both! In Shamanic Shift Center&os;s space this USB-wand device receives and sends from one sacred place (and direction and height) only. WIFI connecting options are plentiful around this east side Milwaukee neighborhood. Maybe I am being guided to shift out of here and into public cafes for planned ahead periods of blogging, Squidooing, and other content production and correspondence.

This coming week I will test the 3G device as I travel out of town on a few short jaunts, that can be shamanic jaunts for gaining understanding around and within this situation. This may be an opportunity to learn more from Trickster. Also, while the window of opportunity for exchanging this particular 3G laptop-connect device is open, I will test it in as many places as I can.

ATT tech-support put in a trouble ticket because the agent became convinced the unstable internet connection I am getting is a network issue. I am supposed to get a follow-up call in a day or so about that. I agree there is a signal reception issue of some sort but I am almost certain that the device and communications manager have Trickster in them too.

Other networking and connections: I am looking to reach out more purposefully though social networks and shamanic organizations. But I know I must begin dropping some memberships and web presences to make spacetime in my schedule to link up some new - and hopefully more creative, harmonious, and effective - community shamanizing connections.

Wow, Milwaukee is blanketed with snow again!

Feed digests for science and religion news stories

Sun, 08 Feb 2009 23:53 GMT

Image by DaylandS -Married 20 Years on Feb 13th via Flickr

Two RSS feed digests you can subscribe to: Unless or until Feed Informer ceases its feed digesting service our circle has a Plus account there. Currently we can digest 100 news sources into 100 RSS feed digests which can show 100 items.

We have not been able to pay up for this wonderful service due to ownership and other changes (from what used to be Feeddigest). The message on the account details page at Feed Informer's website still states that their payment service is being transitioned, and not to worry, that our service will continue. So far we have been unable to connect to find out more. The login that is supposed to allow us to join a support forum won't work and comments left on their blog just get deleted without response.

So the feed digests I am about to tell about here could cease to exist suddenly. We also display them on Shamantic!'s old portal website, here. The URLs to subscribe are below. (You can substitute 'atom' for 'rss' if you prefer the atom version.)

Chammy curates a feed digest of science news and blogging -
http://app.feed.informer.com/digest3/SOW9YQK6N7.rss
So far this digest draws from 35 sources.

I curate a feed digest of religious and spiritual news and blogging -
http://app.feed.informer.com/digest3/ISZJ4VGZ9R.rss
So far my digest only draws from 11 sources.

A shaman foolish poem

Sat, 07 Feb 2009 11:22 GMT

Image via Wikipedia

Free Fooling

A Free-Verse Poem
by Teal Talking Raven

Shaman Fool,
act out of bounds...

show off the magical powers of pretend...

tell everyone how to break their bonds
and super-string harmonic connections from loosened bindings still knotted end to end.

Show how to dream adventurous shifts across dimensions and realms...
Tell how to quantum leap on purpose from either side of any polarity to its opposite,
entangled in paradox,

yet gracefully free to fly or take
this universal free
fall

called LIFE!

Greetings Anyone! The recent Shaman Fool posts here stirred up this poem that isn't finished, and may never be finished. (If ever I do finish it I will post the rest.) BTW, over on our blog, Living SpaceTime Spiral Temple, is Chammy's free-verse New NOW Wings poem, also written today.

I wrote a wings poem while celebrating birds and trees

Sat, 07 Feb 2009 06:16 GMT

Image by Sergey Yeliseev via Flickr

New NOW Wings

A Free Verse Poem
by Chammy

Wholly, Holey, Holy
HEAVEN as Earth,

Multi-holi-dimensional rainbow incarnate,
seamless, stretched thin, garment - of
LIFE, the universe, and this fool,

Gravitationally distorted, wildly warped, expanding container,
nevertheless, the best for making LIGHT
of anything,

Wrap around me, rapt, in this cosmic fun!

Refine and purify me
with each uncoiling weirder, wispier, wickeder
spacetime moment,

While impossible, unauthorized,
ultra-shiny, extra-blazing new now-WINGS unfurl

on my feet,
on my heart,
on my head!

Also: For me, this is the month and season for celebrating birds of all kinds. They are springing into singing every morning. And to go with celebrating the birds of earth, another New Year is happening.

Tree New Year! The New Year of Trees, or Tu Bishvat is Monday, February 9th, 2009. This is a Jewish holiday so it begins at sundown, Sunday, February 8th.

The Way of the Shaman Fool Continues

Fri, 06 Feb 2009 07:17 GMT

Image via Wikipedia

Education in the School of the Shaman Fool is Self and Spirit directed. A shaman fool is like a feather or leaf on the cosmic winds - yet with attitude and purpose. Self-teaching takes place in all directions, levels, dimensions, realms, quadrants, and orders of reality. Shaman Fools remember and live...

F.U.N. N.O.W as Fun Freely Unfurling Universal Unity aNew Now - No Other Way (but here and now)! Shamanic ways are for shifting, dreaming, dancing, and storying the moment of here and now anew, mystically and magically, and practically. A shaman fool turns inside-out and upside down to give all to receive all from Mystery, Life, and Spirit (as the Spirits), and lives it for giving it and forgiving all, again and again and again until The End.

Shaman fools like all shamans travel as prayer through HERE and NOW into all the realms of Spirit, Soul, Psyche, Energy, and Matter. Shaman fools rush on purpose through any mustard-seed or nano- sized spacetime gateway that winks open the HERE and NOW moment of reality-shifting power. Shaman fools, like all shamans, navigate life and mystery within and beyond everything, from greatest to least, to return with healing and transforming gifts from Spirit and the Spirits. While shamanizing, shaman fools go out of their way to live foolish wisdom.

Foolish Wisdom is flowing all kinds of energy everywhere and when, incarnating divine FUN experiences as new potentials and possibilities, and the now-power to dance them to life. Shaman fools voyage all levels, directions, quadrants, dimensions, realms, and orders of reality and never settle down on any branch or get comfortable in any niche. Shaman fools keep on adventuring, only resting and reveling two or three nights at any crossroads, until all wondering, shifting, dreaming, dancing, journeying, and jesting is storied to The End.

One of our shamanic teachers reminds us..."Most organized religious or published belief systems are sincere and powerful, yet usually fun suppressing, attempts by devoted followers to preserve the fruits of some Wise Fool's original, individual, FUN-filled direct experience of Spirit, of knowing and flowing the original, first to last laugh of universal, cosmic FUN. Yet the more the wise fool's followers organize what they heard and bundle up what they received, the further and farther they fall behind. All followers will catch up eventually, so never worry. No matter what, keep on, and keep the FUN!"

Shaman fools, like all shamans and shamanizers rattle, drum, sing, and dance themselves empty and open in the present moment at hand, heart, and mind, for Spirit and the Spirits to spiral blessings, graces, wonders, and gifts in and out of our world and the whole universe. At the deepest center of being and around the widest circle of all-that-is, all shamans and shamanizers encounter life as death and dying, and death as (perhaps) the most profound shapeshift to new life. Every shaman must know how to bring in the new and guide what is dying to the next, better (and best) new dreams and shapes.

A shamanic teacher and jester of our circle said..."If your way helps you laugh in the face of death, and then laugh right along with death, then that is a good way!" All shamans and shamanizers shift, dream, drum, and dance new life. The most serious of shamans and shamanizers express foolish wisdom and their solemnest rituals may look foolish to ordinary eyes. Shaman fools may go out of their ways to make bigger fools of themselves than other shamanizers.

The Way of the Shaman Fool

Wed, 04 Feb 2009 06:46 GMT

Image by emdot via Flickr

As an ecstatic, adventuring, entertainer, always wondering and wandering with intention, a Shaman Fool learns, through years long self-education all the skills, technologies, and tricks any competent, purposeful, shamanic practitioner needs to know, from all kinds of teachers. The shaman fool's teachers are Spirit and the Spirits, companions on the way, and all living beings. There are many shamanic curriculum and self-education outlines on the web. We like the Path of the Feather.

Spirit and the Spirits must stir your shamanic vocation and after you live through the tests of your calling, your real teachers for the rest of your earth journey and beyond are Holy Spirit and the Spirits of Life in non-ordinary reality and thoughout ordinary-reality everyday challenges, assisted by mentors and companions of all kinds around sacred circle spacetime.

If your hunger and thirst is for adventure, fun, and righteousness, nothing in the universe can stop you, shamanic FOOL!

A Shaman Fool is everyone's or anyone's apprentice on the road of universal life, though s/he may have special mentoring from all manner of teachers - sages, heros, other fools (wise or not), and subtle or notorious tricksters. The Shaman Fool is always being taught by spiritual companions who are taught in return. The Shaman Fool's spiritual companions are all the living beings most closely linked in h/is ordinary-reality thoughts, feelings, words, and deeds, who resonate most harmoniously or discordantly along h/er shamanic and life journeys outward and back.

Like all Shamans, the apprenticing Shaman Fool researches, reconciles, synergizes, and transcends as many as possible of h/er world's ancient to contemporary paradigms of art, science, and philosophy, while cultivating, deepening, and clarifying conscious connections with Spirit and Spirits. S/he keeps on adventuring life, always and all ways, conducting h/imself by the best codes of honor, courtesy, and ethics s/he knows, until all journeying days are over and done.

Warmer memory: Tortoise Cat's garden inspection

Mon, 02 Feb 2009 03:39 GMT

The Tortoise Cat's daily garden inspection: I have been removing duplicated content and essays that will never be found and read from the static webpages. When I came across this old video in the context of today's bright midwinter-spring Groundhog Day crisp-shadow sunshine beaming through Shamanic Shift Center's east windows I decided to post it here.

So far all the videos I have posted to ShamanicWays - YouTube of the Tortoise Cat and Shamanic Shift Center's neighborhood are rudimentary. I have been practicing and testing for fun and for the sake of improving, eventually. I am still using a camera meant to take still digital photos that also has the capacity for shooting short video clips. The background noises from re-focusing are distracting, and then there is my breathing and the breezes!

Healworld and Prayer-Request Twttrstrm Shout-Outs

Sat, 31 Jan 2009 16:27 GMT

Image by Shamanic Shift via Flickr

Where would you like Twitter Healers to send healing? Go here to shout-out your answer. There is also a module for voting for the next featured location. Our circle participates with the Twitter Healers every day sending healing energy-flow towards the location chosen for the day during shamanic dreaming, journeying, and prayer-shifting periods. When we give healing attention to one place it radiates over the net to all places and the whole world.

What topics, peoples, situations, events, and individuals would you add to our circle's prayer-shift list for daily shamanizing? Our Twttrstrm shout-out is here. Our prayer-list is here. Please join in, whether you tell about it or not!

Where are my Shamanic Ways definitions?

Fri, 30 Jan 2009 08:48 GMT

Image by Dru! via Flickr

Why haven't I written many plainly worded 'what is' and 'how-to' paragraphs of information on shamanic ways? I teach as I am stirred by Spirit and Spirits in the moment, one on one. There are plenty of decent how-to books about shamanic ways that can prepare someone for individualized instruction.

What I have written I published on older, static html pages for anyone to find. Today at a meeting it was suggested that I would do better to publish everything here because not many are likely to click to inner website pages or scroll down those enough to read my short shamanic ways essays.

I don't want to duplicate content I have already published on the internet. My and our circle's working definition of shamanic ways is written on Shamanic-Ways.info, our shamanic links portal. I will soon have more shamanic instruction organized on interlinked Squidoo pages. I will find what I have published and link it up in posts here.

I am considering importing the eBook notes I have written and collected so far at New Shamanics into this weblog then starting the eBook over again, attempting a more thrilling approach than the open-ended eBook-as-blog that I was attempting. This eBook will be downloadable as a PDF first then maybe published by a print on demand service. If /when I move those posts from New Shamanics I will shift it into the (new) shamanic links and books portal with book reviews for posts to keep Blogger's bots happy.

Blogger lost track of reviewing our disabled Widget-Fun-Store page! The trickster troubles with Blogger continue. Apparently Blogger lost our 10/23/2009 request for a review of the 'Fun-Widget-Stores' page so that URL is still disabled for being sploggish-looking to the bots, and seems to be back to square-one in the review process. I renewed the review request today when I noticed the reference to our previous review request had disappeared.

I don't know if I can trust Blogger with our content, considering what is happening - or not happening - with that situation. It is nothing personal - literally. (That is the trouble.) Maybe there is wisdom in weblog and webpage redundancy, after all. Maybe Trickster is just perched here in the middle of somewhere on a sign that is telling me exactly what I need to do!

More soon...

Calming vitalizing road trip along Wisconsin Hwy 18

Fri, 23 Jan 2009 00:35 GMT

Image by Heyes via Flickr
Road Journey: I'm blogging from Shamanic Shift Center in Milwaukee tonight! Chammy and I will be staying at the Astor Hotel across the street, nothing fancy. But we are both too old to bed down on the floor anymore, I hate to admit.

It is rare to be here in Milwaukee and even rarer to be able to attend the Friday night circle in person. We are among those who join in, in Spirit, every week through non-ordinary reality.

We traveled here with neighbors who are visiting relatives and shopping. I was very happy that we drove along Hwy 18 most of the way so I could peer through the tree branches for glimpses of Red-Tail Hawks, Barn Owls, and Crows.

The drive was calming and vitalizing. I blurred my eyes and tilted my head sideways as I gazed out the car window. I spotted several raptors perched in barren branches, none circling or soaring, and many crows, some perched but many more climbing and diving, as if for fun.

We shall be returning to our hideout tomorrow night. Now already we are amid deciding between visiting the Milwaukee Public Museum and the Milwaukee Art Museum for a challenging excursion tomorrow. But we may go sight-seeing from a Yellow Cab instead if we can reconnect with our regular driver.

A young lady named Ann who drove up from Chicago was here for her first visit to the Friday night Shamanic Shift Center circle, but not her first shamanic journey. Tonight the circle's overall intention was catalyzing more emerging beautiful, crystaline pockets of order from chaos of all shapes, sizes, forms, and kinds throughout the world.

Update: Due to the hospitality of another circle companion (who did not attend the circle) we have overnight accomodations in an extra bedroom. And we are turning in early!

Celebrating sunspots as the days glow lighter

Thu, 22 Jan 2009 10:22 GMT

Image via Wikipedia
This blog is still about seeking and finding beings and wonders to celebrate. I celebrate both natual and human wrought wonders.

Today I visited SpaceWeather.com, usually my first stop on the web, and found, natually, a new cause for celebrating. I had just been expressing my appreciation to our sun as I took my daily walk, outside again, noticing the longer day, basking in the warmer temperature.

Then I read that a new Solar Cycle 24 sunspot was born two weeks ago over the sun's eastern horizon. NASA has been watching it though the STEREO mission, through the ultraviolet telescopic lenses of two identical spacecraft orbiting opposite each other. Now NASA is showing the world this weirdly green (and hey, that's OK by me) amazing little movie of it.

So today in my shamanizing I'm celebrating these wonders of space weather and rocket science! (When I was a child all of rocket science was still in the dreaming stages of life.)

Re: info

Sat, 17 Jan 2009 03:30 GMT

Hi Gina, Andrew, and Any One, Here are only a few words from my (semi-)retired self: Elizabeth does live a deep understanding of shamanic work and play and

A new 8 dimensional 248 point exceptionally simple 'Theory of Everything'?

Thu, 15 Jan 2009 15:19 GMT

Quoting The Daily Galaxy (about Garrett Lisi's new radical Exceptionally Simple Theory of Everything':The new theory reported recently in New Scientist has been laid out in an online paper entitled "An Exceptionally Simple Theory of Everything

Re: info

Thu, 15 Jan 2009 11:48 GMT

I just wanted to vouch that Elizabeth is a great teacher and you can learn many things from her. Good luck on your adventure Gina! Best wishes, Andrew

Happy New Year greetings and an update

Tue, 13 Jan 2009 06:24 GMT

Hi, This Yahoo! group is dormant - if not quite dead - as you can see! Some of the elder co-founding members I know personally have semi-retired from the

Re: info

Tue, 13 Jan 2009 06:14 GMT

Hi! I teach what I know about contemporary shamanic ways. Contact me through here, http://shamanicshift.wordpress.com/contact/ or 414-289-8661. More

Welcome to ShamanicAlchemy but...

Tue, 13 Jan 2009 06:08 GMT

Hi, This Yahoo! group is dormant as you can see! Some of the elder members I know personally have semi-retired from the internet, at least temporarily. But

info

Tue, 13 Jan 2009 01:24 GMT

Good Morning, I'm looking for a shamanic teacher in the wisconsin area can anyone help? Thanks

none

Mon, 12 Jan 2009 07:33 GMT

I'm a new member here and would like too say hi.

Read about 'Venezuela's ghostly Robin Hoods' in the new GlobalPost

Sun, 11 Jan 2009 10:05 GMT

Quoting from GlobalPost:Venezuela's ghostly Robin HoodsAmid rising crime levels, citizens turn to the spirits of dead criminals for protection.By Charlie Devereux - GlobalPostPublished: January 7, 2009 21:42 ETUpdated: January 10, 2009 13:48 ET CARA

Galapagos Pink Iguanas and much more to celebrate NOW

Sat, 10 Jan 2009 11:45 GMT

Image by spodzone via Flickr Yay, a new surprise holiday season is here! I am joining in the celebration of the 12 Days of the Galapagos Pink Iguanas, as invented on January 7th on the social network Twitter. Further rituals and observances for at least some of these new festival days can be found by scrolling through holiday inventor @z1444z's Twitter tweets.

Companions Circle has added the 12 Days of the Galapagos Pink Iguanas to our yearly liturgical calendar. It is wonderful to begin a festival season immediately after Epiphany and the beginning this stretch of ordinary spacetime - all the supposedly just plain counting days - until the Spring fertility, regeneration, and resurrection holy days.

This weekend the sky is so cloudy here in southeastern Wisconsin that this winter's second awesome perigee Moon can barely shine through, and certainly not the Northern Lights which we often enough can see even this far south. In many places a bit futher north folks are seeing those Aurora Borealis displays.

Of course there are sunspots happening now too!

I'm catching up in blogging but the Tortoise Cat is way behind!

Tue, 06 Jan 2009 17:22 GMT

Greetings Gaia! Here is a quick update.

As far as shamanic blogging goes I am updating more frequently these days on our circle's blogspot. Biy yjr other blog authors there are in retirement or semi-retirement from blogging or the internet. So our blogging shamanic shifting mission is up to me.

Those circle companions are supporting Shamanic Shift Center still in many other ways, most importantly through daily prayer-shifting, during 3 to 7 prayer-periods several of circle keep each day. Add to our prayer-shift list in our candle shrine or add to nShrine's Twitter Shrine (we check it).

The Tortoise Cat blogs here but she's way behind.

Whale Wars? (Whales swim in harmony!)

Tue, 06 Jan 2009 07:49 GMT

Daily Vigil for the Middle East from EarthRainbow Network

Tue, 06 Jan 2009 06:58 GMT

From: Jean Hudon

Hello!

What follows is a complement to the current Special Peace Vigil for the Middle East and will remain in effect for as long as the situation in Gaza requires it.

Please help NETWORK to as many people as possible this suggestion of a Daily Vigil for the Middle East done at the time and for the duration of your own choosing.

Jean Hudon
Focus Group Facilitator

DAILY VIGIL FOR THE MIDDLE EAST
1. Summary
2. More information related to this Daily Vigil for the Middle East
Also recommended to your attention...
Meditation Focus #194: Living as a Soul EarthRainbow FocusArchives/MeditationFocus194
-------

1. SUMMARY

If you feel powerless in front of the deepening crisis in Gaza and are horrified by the level of violence and the lopsided domination of one party to this conflict over the other one, know that this is precisely what the dark entities behind this want you to experience. What is happening right now has been carefully planned for maximum effect. This is a test... a litmus test of our ability to grow beyond the limiting confines of our emotional nature, which all too often and all too easily entrap us into a fear-laden or hatred-driven reactive mode, thus depriving us of our innate ability to radiate Love and Light and thus dispel the very cause within each one of us of such abhorrent behaviors as what can be witnessed right now in, over and around the Gaza Strip.

We are not powerless. We are not innocent either. We each played a role in allowing this situation, like so many others around the world, to degenerate into the base level of wanton violence that can only breed ever more violence, hatred and endless suffering... until one day soon when the sense of separation and the pervasive illusion of our engrossing physical reality will be dispelled for good and forever. Each time in our lives when we choose to hit back when hit, to shout back when shouted at, to react in kind or worst to whatever is done to us out of anger or any other vile emotion, we contribute to the cesspool of dark energies and enable ever more despicable behaviors like those humans have displayed for millennia. We are all connected and whatever we feel, think and do has a direct impact on everyone and everything else.

If we can heal ourselves-and yes we truly can!...-as is suggested in the wonderful Ho'oponopono Hawaiian self-healing philosophy, from all past hurts inflicted on us by others or by us to others, we will then directly contribute to lessening the charge of negative energies feeding all conflicts around the world and around us and blaze a path of Light through which countless others will soon be able to walk in our collective ascension towards ever more Light and Love.

Peace and Love will prevail and the delaying tactics now used by those opposing the Light as part of their own karmically driven experiences will not slow our steady progress towards our spiritual destination and Promised Land in the higher realms of existence in this multidimensional universe. Being reminded of our spiritual headings in our long journey back to Source, we shall therefore seize this opportunity to choose Love over any other soul vibration and amplify on a daily basis, with dedication and clairvoyant understanding, the positive vibrations of Love, Compassion and spiritual embrace of our true divine nature and extend like a vast healing dispensation of Light descending from the heavenly realms over the entire Middle East and into ever human heart affected by this transitory situation, the Power of Love that is in us all.

And thus the seeds of Peace, Love and Harmony will quickly grow and flourish to heal, enlighten and raise away from the grasp of darkness the souls of our brothers and sisters in our Journey back Home.

You know what to Be now... The Light in you has always known...
This Suggestion of a Daily Vigil for the Middle East is archived at www.Earthrainbownetwork.com/Archives2009/DailyVigil.htm

Dense fog veil enlightens

Sat, 27 Dec 2008 15:03 GMT

Image by l*e via Flickr
Fun, then fear, then ecstasy: I went fog voyaging today.

Yesterday after days of bitter chill and snowfall, much warmer air blew in from the southeast over southeastern Wisconsin. So one of the densest fogs I can remember billowed up obscuring more and more of my faithful landmarks.

Ponds of melting snow made me detour this way and that as I navigated my daily walkabout. The mist around my feet made me wonder if I could be walking miraculously over the sea or floating on air!

Even the tallest, thickest trees appeared as dim, then slightly darker patches of weird yet non-descript, pre-dream, existential raw material. Everything loomed vaguely on all sides.

Happy to be stolling, not driving (which I rarely do anymore at my age) I adventured on. I consider these daily walks to be another connection between ordinary and non-ordinary realities, a kind of shamanic journey. But I wondered how I would see any signs or receive any messages amid this sloppy, gray world.

As all remaining familiarity with this neighborhood woods began to fail and the trail seemed to close in on me, I grew afraid. Wow. Fear! When did fear last spoil my fun?

Is this thickening fog curtain a sign of an uncertain future or fading vitality? Then I remembered "Faith, that comes by hearing, pierces through the veil..." just as Crow cawed then Hawk screamed. Then my heart warmed and grew light.

I resumed adoring universal LIFE, giving thanks for unusual (even uncertain) circumstances, and blessing all this world's today-travelers. ~ Teal

Walking In Fog

Sat, 27 Dec 2008 13:52 GMT

Image by soupstance via Flickr Poem by Teal Talking Raven

Fog now veils this woods
and my world! Questions arise...
My path closes in!

This garmet of fog...
Is this fog more like a pall,
or a snug blanket?

Behind the curtain
of Mystery so much of life
remains! Where am I?

Crow caws then Hawk screams.
Oh! "Faith that comes by hearing
pierces through the veil...."

I am here in Love
while Hope arises within
dreaming new visions!

UPDATE: Information for Companions Circle's prayer list shift!

Fri, 19 Dec 2008 04:14 GMT

Anything posted on these sites is part of Shamanic Shift Center's and Companion Circle's and the Shamanic Humorists & Optimists-SHO's, and Shamantic!-Elizabeth's ongoing prayer-request list for daily shamanizing:

Online Candle Shrines:
http://nshrine.com/shrine/ShamanFooling
http://nshrine.com/shrine/twitter

Add topics and requests to our circle's prayer list for shamanizing here by joining us at Gaia, or in the shrines, or (privately) through this contact form at our Contact and News Portal. Private requests will be added to the public list with names and identifying information removed.

Here's the UPDATE! From now on, please use the candle shrines! I will be updating our links around the web soon. If you are reading this because I haven't yet or I missed one, accept my apologies for this detour/reroute!

Even though the RSS feed here makes this pod a handy place to post prayer requests and intentions for shamanizing, we will be using the Candel Shrines as our circle's main prayer list(s) from now on. Occasionally, circle companions with access will blog about community and global prayer-intentions for shamanizing on two blogspots that are linked to our main, original circle's blogspot:

Global or community prayer and shamanizing topics:
http://shamanic-prayer.blogspot.com/
http://othermiscellanea.blogspot.com/

Wed, 31 Dec 1969 12:00 GMT

Full Moon gazing and bathing before winter rain showers

Sat, 13 Dec 2008 02:15 GMT

Image by kharlosan via Flickr
Oops! I was going to 'retire' from blogging but here I am again. I imagine Teal and I will keep updating this blog every several days to once a month as before.

However it is true that, with a very few exceptions, I have decided to retire from the internet. I will update the blogroll here again as soon as Blogrolling gets fixed, or rather, as soon as 'Blogrolling 2.0' is released.

Yesterday evening, before the clouds snuck in, I had fun gazing at the brightest biggest Full Moon since 1993. Rabbits were out there with me but I did not see any of them dancing.

I know I won't be spotting any Geminid Meteors through the rain showers expected tonight and all weekend. OK, it looks like Zemanta has us covered through many related articles.

Help with finances, contract, job, and economy

Tue, 09 Dec 2008 10:32 GMT

For S - help with financial difficulties due to the economy; prayer that the contract I have been offered is quickly and fairly negotiated, and that the funds are quickly released; prayer that I am able to do a good job and the company is pleased with my work.

Thank you.

Shamanic snow-play and other winter shifts

Sat, 06 Dec 2008 11:59 GMT

Image via Wikipedia Shamanic Snow-Play:

I create new shamanic actions every day dring December for celebrating darkness, cold, snow, and ice, so as to kill off any contary troubling wishes that lurk and bother, any old wishes that I had settled down elsewhere, anywhere it never snows. But I make small, momentary gestures of childish snow-play into shamanic acts. These are not serious rituals.

I decide to link all experiences I notice related to darkness, cold, snow, and ice to a shamanic shifitng intention, one of my personal ones or one of the circle's. When I shovel snow it is a sacrament, an outward shift signifying and activating an inward shift. So it can be the same - only different - when I throw snow in fun.

When I shiver it is shamanic shivering. I insist - or pretend - that it be ecstatic shivering. When I slip on ice and fall it is shamanic slipping and falling. So the first thing I see after that is the sign or answer I was just seeking.

When I must walk an errand through cloudy, windy, early darkness I imagine I am already asleep in my cosy bed, awakening on purpose amid my dreaming, offering my dreaming (no matter how goofy) to Spirit. Shamanic pretending is powerful.

Just before dusk I heard the local flock of crows cawing more wildly than they had in days. When I rushed outside to watch these favorite companions of mine circle, it seemed they were telling anyone with shamanic ears about an approaching storm of chaos-magic moments, a squall of split seconds for asking and receiving wildest dreams in an eye-blink.

Maybe Crows Poem

Sat, 06 Dec 2008 01:09 GMT

Image by monkeyc.net via Flickr
MAYBE CROWS
by Teal Talking Raven

Maybe crows know how
mathematical chaos

merges with Primal CHAOS...in moments
of wildest winter darkness!

What dreams will dream though
black spiraling wing
spans dipping into Mystery

and re-turning NOW?

New prayer requests through the contact form or phoned in

Wed, 03 Dec 2008 06:03 GMT

more self-employment work and success for JLA

relief from paranoid thoughts for S.

wellness for SAJ's patient

forgiveness around a troubled situation nearby in the neighborhood, and blessings for KA and CD

E. - Thanksgivings for many more blessings of new successes!

Blessings in place of shame and blame!

Wed, 03 Dec 2008 05:58 GMT

For the one or any one who attempts to send 'shame' or any other unpleasant energy-flow regarding Shamanic Shift Center's non-profit mission, I DO NOT receive the unpleasantness as such, nor does it bounce back to the sender untransformed. Immediately, thanks to Spirit and Spirits, the message is shifted to blessings and then returned and then sent beyond to all the universe, for receiving by anyone who resonates harmoniously.

Yay, a happy sky sign today - hug, reunity, love, or...?

Mon, 01 Dec 2008 07:16 GMT

Image by pablodf via Flickr

Smile anyway! The skies are mostly cloudy again today. So I will go outside anyway this evening during dusk and celebrate today's remarkable alignment of Venus, Jupiter, and the Moon into a celestial smile-face. My shamanic shifting theme for today: Knowing and connecting within to the giant smile in the Heavens shining comfort and hope over all Earthy troubles, even on a cloudy, gusty, snowy day.

Shamanic vision: The energies of Jupiter, Venus, and the Moon are merging into a smile-face of powerful promise, an outward and visible sign of global reality shifts for the better still hiding within. In the shamanic imagination of my second childhood I choose to see this coincidental spectacle - even if physically I can't see it through the clouds - as a sign that desires for a world of lovingkindness, mercy, and generosity are already near the surfaces of our world's dreamings, awaiting showing forth everywhere soon.

My new favorite nutty professor of observational astronomy

Sun, 30 Nov 2008 03:32 GMT

Self-Education Opportunity: If you want to take in some well organized, helpfully illustrated college level e-lectures on general science, astronomy, and cosmology visit the University of Oregon on the web, Professor James Schomberts pages! The bi

Zeno introduces me to his teacher Crates of Thebes

Sat, 29 Nov 2008 18:44 GMT

Image from Wikimedia Commons

My extended shamanic dreaming and journeying the Golden Age of Greek Philosophers continues: I am still constructing the shamanic art assignment given by Zeno. But last night I became aware in a dream (with the Shamantic! spirit team) just as I was being introduced and turned over to Crates of Thebes for further instructions. He did not look like the picture above except in the clownish spirit it expresses so vividly. He and his wife were very fun folks.

They made my day too. After weathering a troubling ordinary reality encounter this holiday weekend with Trickster(s) under the from of two habitually, maybe even sociopathically dishonest (perhaps conscienceless) young businesswomen who just moved less than a mile from here I required soul healing. After weathering this challenge well and learning from the mistakes I made and repairing damages which were minimal, thank Spirit and Spirits, I know and feel that a medicinal infusion of sweet, jolly, weird, compassionate, original cynicism is what my inner soul-doctor is ordering!

Bitter cynicism is easy to find in our age in this world, especially on the internet, but the sweet, jesting, healing varieties seem all too rare - possibly endangered. My assignment from Crates was to help anchor and restore the original beneficial cynicism in our world (through me, by just that much) by creating, concocting, and consuming a health strengthening hot beverage today. In creative chaos every little shift has the potential to make big waves.

So now, guided by Spirit and Spirits, I am mulling old fashioned cynicism and spiced apple cider, 1000% of everything vitamin powder, honey, and several other secret ingredients. Mmmm.

Parallel Universes - Four Levels of Multiverse

Tue, 25 Nov 2008 13:30 GMT

Quoting from the html version of Parallel Universes by Max Tegmark:Abstract: I survey physics theories involving parallel universes, which form a natural four-level hierarchy of multiverses allowing progressively greater diversity. Level I: A generi

Shamanic dream visit with Zeno

Mon, 24 Nov 2008 16:55 GMT

Ancient Agora of Athens by DerHexer, Wikimedia Commons

Shamanic Travels in the Golden Age of Greek Philosophy Update:

Last night I awakened within shamanic dreaming and realized I was in the Stoa Poecile. (Caution: This is the best link but it is a page of a blog about artistic Erotica!) I was shocked awake by the bright colorful paintings decorating that place but already I have forgotten the specific images and themes.

I remember that the original Stoic, Zeno of Citium had been teaching a crowd. Then before departing he singled me out and called me over to him. I remember we walked a ways as he gave me a shamanic action to carry out in ordinary-reality, and eventually the internet and some other middle realms.

I am to create a piece of shamanic art blending symbols for "happy stoicism, compassionate cynicism, and serene skepticism" and await further instructions.

Re: In my foolishness I have been out looking up for days

Tue, 18 Nov 2008 06:45 GMT

Hi Chammy (and Teal and Anyone), I realize it may be a while before you log back onto the web and read this but I want to report that I did go out sky-hunting

Welcome to Shamanic Shift Center's contact portal!

Sun, 16 Nov 2008 04:07 GMT

: Image by Shamanic Shift via Flickr

Greetings Everyone and Anyone from Shamanic Shift Center, Milwaukee, Wisconsin! This website is not a blog anymore. It is our announcements, information, and contact portal. To contact Elizabeth, Shamanic Shift Center, or Companions Circle, click the CONTACT tab above.

The contact form here sends an email message to The Rev. Elizabeth Cunningham Perkins of Shamanic Shift Center and Companions Circle Church. Our ‘long list' of other websites and webpages are listed here on the sidebar. Many of these offer ways to open a connection with The Rev. Elizabeth Cunningham Perkins, shamanic minister and co-founder of Companions Circle Church, the non-profit umbrella organization for Shamanic Shift Center (Milwaukee and online), the Shamanic Humorists & Optimists (SHO), the Shamanic Ways Links Project, Blogging Shamanic Shifting, shamanic jester Shamantic! The Wise, and more.

For information about Shamanic Shift Center's ongoing schedule and services, particularly the Friday night shamanic circle, visit our monthly Events and Updates portal. You can register ahead for the shamanic circle here through the contact form or by calling 414-289-8661.

Visit the Circle's Blogspot and Elizabeth's Blog Portal for blogging. And do follow on Twitter!

This post and the sidebar will update but there probably won't be new ‘blog' posts here, at least not for quite a while.

Posted in Hello Tagged: Milwaukee Wisconsin, Shamanic Shift Center

Dreaming of cold clear skies for November sky shows

Sun, 16 Nov 2008 02:43 GMT

Image via Wikipedia Yes! It was cloudy yesterday but clearing up today. I am hoping for one or two at least partly clear early mornings tomorrow or the day after for Leonid meteor spotting. The waning Gibbous Moon glows brightly though clear patches but it may not steal the show altogether.

The brightest red, brown, yellow, and orange leaves I have seen in many a year have almost all fallen to the ground here in sooutheastern Wisconsin. So there is that much more room for sky lights of all kinds sparkle though.

Also I am wondering over India's latest presence upon our Moon and what shifts this shall bring to pass here on earth. Well I shall close now, for in a short while I expect to be able to see the companionship of Jupiter and Venus shining in the southwest!

Keep wondering and looking up and all around!
~ Chammy

Re: In my foolishness I have been out looking up for days

Sun, 16 Nov 2008 02:28 GMT

Ha ha... I was outside this morning during pre-dawn for shamanizing purposes and did spend a little while foolishly looking up. There were many breaks in the

Re: In my foolishness I have been out looking up for days

Wed, 12 Nov 2008 02:18 GMT

Hi! Most likely I shall be looking up from the inside-out. For middle realm intentions I often shamanic journey through whatever the current spaceweather is

Re: On a rare quick visit to Shamanic Shift Center I noticed

Sat, 08 Nov 2008 03:34 GMT

My shamanic (and shaman-foolish) wondering goes on: In psychology and psychiatry are pharmacology and spirituality still being combined? Or is it more and

Re: In my foolishness I have been out looking up for days

Sat, 08 Nov 2008 03:17 GMT

I wonder if it will keep getting hazier and cloudier around here! I am still hoping for clearer (that usual) skies for Leonid Meteor watching. But now I

Update on my shamanic journeying through Ancient Greece

Sat, 08 Nov 2008 00:27 GMT

Update on my shamanic journeying to the Stoics, Cynics, and Skeptics: My shamanic travels though several centuries of Ancient Greece now happen as dream-journeys, mostly during my sleep at night, but now and then during naps. Several philosophers are taking turns accompanying me and the Shamantic! spirit-team on spacetime middle-realms excursions through their Greece and their world, around various topics and themes.

Last night I visited Delphi! The philosophers have expressed happiness that I have finally demonstrated an interest in their throughts, words, and deeds, and the other benefits of connecting to their Golden Age. I wake up in a state of ecstatic amazement but even though I attempt to jot notes immediately, I forget most of these adventures until the dream-journeying picks up again.

My thoughts and emotions and moods have shifted for the better anyway. I expect that I shall be able to remember more later. I do recall that within these dreams I am constructing carefully some weird shamanic device or container for remembering.

Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons, by inyucho

On a rare quick visit to Shamanic Shift Center I noticed

Wed, 05 Nov 2008 04:31 GMT

...that Pharmacological Alchemy by the psychiatrist upstairs was in highest demand. Wow, that North Astor Street doorway has gotten busier and noisier since

In my foolishness I have been out looking up for days

Wed, 05 Nov 2008 01:14 GMT

...at the sky wonders of clear November nights! The Taurid Meteors are NOW!

On Shifting Shamanic Shift Center

Mon, 27 Oct 2008 15:43 GMT

Update on the notion of shifting Shamanic Shift Center: Even as I signed the lease for another year (11/01/08 - 10/31/09) here at the corner of North Astor and East Knapp Streets on the east side of Milwaukee, WI, in the historical building known as Montgomery House, as I was guided by the Spirit-Team at the end of August, I still sensed energy-flows rising for GO-ing as I wrote earlier this year. But these stirrings and burblings were still a ways within and beyond this ordinary spacetime and the moment of action.

Ongoing problems with this building&os;s maintenance have kept me from feeling complacently comfortable here, though I have been able to shamanize all concerns effectively towards better so far. Building problems have provided a series of convenient opportunities for practicing shamanic shifting.

This office/sanctuary/home is an unusual mixed-use rented space where I can operate a shamanic circle &os;church&os; (office and small sanctuary) and also live on site as the minister. I still raise and donate over 50% of Companions Circle&os;s expenses through other self-employment projects, and meeting the medium-range goal of having Companions Circle become self-supporting including providing the minister&os;s room and board would be easier here financially than in any 2-rent arrangement.

So I have been hoping that the dreams and images of Companions Circle and Shamanic Shift Center (this micro-church&os;s main mission) moving are symbolic, meaning a bigger consciousness and life shift than usual in approach to this project rather than a literal location change. But I have been doing my best to keep my mind, heart, and gut open. On this Dark Moon day during the darkening days of the year I dream and journey for new lights on this subject!

Middle-Realm shamanic consultation with Greek philosophers, still continuing

Fri, 24 Oct 2008 15:06 GMT

Extended historical shamanic journey and dream update: So far...I know that I and the Shamantic! Spirit-Team will be receiving attitude adjusting and energy-flow re-balancing &os;symbol-power-container&os; gifts for me and this world - which could be anything - from several Greek philosophers who lived over an ordinary-reality span of 300 years or so during the often so-called and variously defined Golden Age of Greek Philosophy, a period that is also often defined in reference to the life of Socrates.

The areas I wish to explore in ancient Greece are still variously roped, gated, or fenced off but the shamanic journeying portal vehicle shapeshifts various all-terrain features as needed. I am moved by Spirit and Spirits to stand fast and wait longer - before attempting to storm through.

Within this transitional, border realm I have been - for several non-ordinary days and nights- conferring and negotiating with an enigmatic &os;Pre-Socratic&os; guy who seems to bridge the Mythological and Pre-Socratic ages. Even though I appear to be detained, as if I present a problem to the beings within, I already sense beneficial, freeing shifts in my everyday thoughts, emotions, and attitudes around the modern false stoicism, cynicism, and skepticism I keep encountering journeying the WWW or city&os;s narrow streets, the intention of this extended shamanic journey and dreaming. I must be receiving gifts in secret while I rest here.

During the latest episode of shamanic dreaming I found myself startled awake in the dream, shocked to find myself (my &os;self&os;) floating and treading liquid in the fatal dose of Hemlock consumed by Socrates! Myth or fact, this poison and decision to swallow must be - for me, somehow - a remedy and a key.

Photo by Georgios Pazios (User:Alaniaris) from Wikipedia

So happy for pre-dawn clear skies and 3 Orionid Meteors

Tue, 21 Oct 2008 10:51 GMT

...Yes! Usually I must shamanic-dream-spot Orionid Meteor showers past cloudy or stormy skies. Here are two related links I found:

http://www.meteorblog.com/2008/10/meteor-shower-2008-orionids-october/
http://www.biggestroom.com/2008/08/one-of-best-meteor-showers-tonight.html

Today the sky stayed nearly cloud-free. Here are some dreamy daylight photos of our little S.E. Wisconsin not quite off the grid woodsy sanctuary...

~ Chammy

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The Way of the Shaman Fool

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Re: info

A new 8 dimensional 248 point exceptionally simple 'Theory of Everything'?

Re: info

Happy New Year greetings and an update

Re: info

Welcome to ShamanicAlchemy but...

info

none

Read about 'Venezuela's ghostly Robin Hoods' in the new GlobalPost

Galapagos Pink Iguanas and much more to celebrate NOW

I'm catching up in blogging but the Tortoise Cat is way behind!

Whale Wars? (Whales swim in harmony!)

Daily Vigil for the Middle East from EarthRainbow Network

Dense fog veil enlightens

Walking In Fog

UPDATE: Information for Companions Circle's prayer list shift!

Full Moon gazing and bathing before winter rain showers

Help with finances, contract, job, and economy

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Maybe Crows Poem

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My new favorite nutty professor of observational astronomy

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Parallel Universes - Four Levels of Multiverse

Shamanic dream visit with Zeno

Re: In my foolishness I have been out looking up for days

Welcome to Shamanic Shift Center's contact portal!

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Re: In my foolishness I have been out looking up for days

Re: In my foolishness I have been out looking up for days

Re: On a rare quick visit to Shamanic Shift Center I noticed

Re: In my foolishness I have been out looking up for days