Client Responsibility in Shamanic Healing: This Means Power

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When someone engages in a shamanic healing session as a client, they are always the primary mover in what can happen. The desire to be more real, more fully one's self, to be free from old conditioning and wounds; to heal, create and satisfy one's heart; the desire to bring one's gifts into the world and live from a place of balance with the Earth and all relations creates the foundation upon which all the work will build. If a client seeks a session then they are not dead, and so have at least some power, despite how they might feel. So we begin with honoring and working with the power already present that someone brings to their life. Consequently it is ultimately up to a client to have some kind of intention--even if that intention is no more focused or self-aware than a wild cry for help---and then it lies within them to determine what truly feels appropriate as far as goals, timing and what they are simply able to receive. .

Ultimately, a person's receptivity, and most specifically, their sincere openness to change are the key elements in how well they will come into balance with themselves and life through a shamanic process, for the helping spirits are not fooling around. They are not timid, ambivalent or worried about liability or money or their professional reputation or whether one likes them; they are not concerned about whether someone will come back to work with them nor are they situated in the bureaucratic documentation, dogma, protocol and boundary-driven modes of traditional modern therapy, although practitioners may be.... Helping spirits are interested in what works. Even the most patient, kindly, serene and tolerant of them mean business. They ARE power, and in these days, we have mostly forgotten what true power feels like, where it comes from and what it asks of us. And truthfully, most clients will not know ahead of time where they stand with any of this., especially their openness to change. It is ongoing discovery.....

Some people will initially receive guidance and/or dynamic healing from the helping spirits, but they don't fully surrender to it. Or over time, they don't apply it, or they only apply the parts that were understandable, appealing, familiar or comforting, and so don't work with it in a deeply committed way. When this happens the power will sometimes diminish. Helping spirits are not there to "fix" us while we remain passive; they will help to shift the matrix of our energies in the direction of our wholeness and balance and they are there to guide us and help us learn how to work with our innate power in the ways that are most effective. Although they will sometimes bring through immediate healing energies that will seem miraculous, these effects tend to be more resilient if we do the needed work to support the changes.

In our culture, many things are sought for the comfort and escape they provide from our difficult, disconnected lives. We can tend to look upon everything ---even and sometimes especially spiritual practices, psychological modalities, energetic rituals--- as commodities to consume for stimulating highs, or "peak" experiences, and the hope of a quick fix, going from one to another and another. But the growth of awareness, congruence with our spirit path, and balance within all our human and non-human relationships is a continual process of coming forward in vulnerable presence, of quieting enough to listen to the voices of Earth and Spirit, and of conscious application of what we've learned and tending in accountable ways to the results.

If we are truly alive and evolving, we will continually be pushed out of our comfort zone. Despite that we are fed, tended and influenced by threads of energies impossible to track, how we live our day-to-day lives and how we approach what limits us is something we alone are accountable for. This is a gift of life and no one can do this for us. We have to be willing to be uncomfortable, to be messy, to grieve, to fail and yet persist, to notice and allow joy no matter what, to engage with Beauty and the benevolent wisdom of the Earth, to stay with the unknown and unknowable for great periods of time, and to leave familiar aspects of ourselves behind in order to align more fully with our spiritual nature and purpose. Becoming aware and accountable to our experience is the only path to true power as an elemental human that I know....

Having said all that, it is also true that nothing is static or isolated and we are not at all alone in this. The presence of the helping spirits will open doors we could never believe were possible. Through the assistance of the helping spirits the darkest, most difficult and resistant difficulties can be lightened and released in ways that defy rationalization. With these same shamanic energies, even the most hidden and silent dreams in our hearts can be accessed and enlivened so we have the resources to live from our beautiful, true natures with a sense of delight, purpose, passion, sovereignty and belonging. And all of this can happen as a client within a shamanic healing relationship with compassion and respect for one's abilities, internal and external resources and right timing.