S. Kelley Harrell's Blog: Intentional Insights - Ancient Healing, Modern Shamanism, page 56
March 10, 2017
Celebrate the Small Things – Gratitude
My weekly gratitude post, in the Celebrate the Small Things [ongoing] Blog Hop.
I’m grateful for a great weekend of board game fun!
I’m really thankful to have handed off a book proposal. I hope it finds a good home!
I’m excited to teach my Intro to Deathwalking class, tomorrow!
What are you grateful for this week? How will you show thanks? Who is grateful for you? I am!
This post is part of Lexa Cain’s blog hop, Celebrate the Small Things, along with her co-hostesses L.G. Keltner and Tonja Drecker. Participate by emailing laura.6eg(at)gmail.com to request to hop on, then post your gratitude every Friday. Easiest blog hop ever! Thanks for coming with me on this journey of self-empowerment and collective awareness.
The post Celebrate the Small Things – Gratitude appeared first on Soul Intent Arts - Ancient Healing, Modern Shamanism.
March 9, 2017
Life Betwixt – Love and Light and Pattern Recognition
I’ve been asked several times why I tell people not to send “love and light,” Reiki, or “healing” when I express ill health.
A concept I’ve hammered throughout the Betwixt Series is that of personal choice, which is often wholly supported until a request defies personal logic. More than logic, when it defies personal projection of what is perceived as spiritually right and just, or it stirs our emotions, we forget all about personal choice. In this case, when we forget personal choice, we forget to honor the person at the center of the request.
In short, I ask people not to send healing because rarely can folks send such without projecting what they think it should look like. It’s our nature to want to help and support. In fact, many of us agonize over not being able to do more for each other. However, when we embrace the role of shaman, it’s our responsibility to recognize when we force the boundaries of someone else’s healing need in order to avoid dealing with our own feelings around it.
What I want is what you want.
What means ‘healed’ to me means ‘healed’ to you.
“But compassion!” you say. Yes, I say it, too. Again, the ability to hold compassion for someone without projecting how that compassion should manifest is key. Can you do that?
“But if I want you to be well, how could that possibly interfere with what you want for yourself?”
Good question. Let’s talk about how our brains work. Our brains function by pattern recognition. We have survived as a species because our brains are wired to recognize patterns and adjust our behaviour, accordingly. Our ability to pattern-match through our five senses is why we don’t put our hand on a hot burner a second time. With this in mind, a good bit of divination is sheer pattern recognition. This isn’t a newsflash, and I detract nothing from woo by asserting such.
Most people are couch potatoes when it comes to making radical change in their lives. It’s not hard to predict what’s going to happen on a couch.
When emotions are involved, patterns are comfort food. Habits are deeply ingrained stuff. The function of pattern recognition is so powerful, it extends beyond our five senses into our dream state. An excellent article about the brain and dream patterns came out last year, indicating that we still pattern-match through our dreams–more effectively than when awake–as the brain barrier drops and ego is uninvolved. Through dreams, we access those deep patterns that we unconsciously project onto our lives and that of others. And we all learned in Psyche 101, it’s those patterns that truly inform our waking consciousness.
“But how does what I want actually affect people?”
We know trees talk to each other. The ancient unseen meridians of acupuncture have been proven as a thing. That information travels through quantum fields is also a thing. Synchronicity phenomenon, which suggests separate objects interrelate with each other, results in correlations between their observable properties . Indeed, the science behind field interconnection and the ability to cast or source influence across it/them is undetermined. However, it hints at pattern recognition beyond the five senses, which has been a focus of ancient sacred paths as much as New Age woo. Whether we name the act of such energy work, magick, prayer, spiritual love and light, creating reality, Law of Attraction, Jesus Saves, or some force we don’t currently know, each of these points to the belief in pattern matching in our common fields.
One of the primary reasons we go through repeated initiations to become shamans is so that we clear out our own shit. We do it for our own benefit, and so that we don’t project that shit onto others. We also do it so that when others are walking through that fear phase of their own lives, we can honor that walk with informed support. We support without trying to change the fear, the walk, or the person. We value the fear as part of the full experience.
To boot, we don’t have to even think about outcome to bless someone in their time of need. We can affirm a person where they are, stand in our truth and path, and bear witness, bless, and support. None of these require forcing our own end game onto the dynamic.
It’s our job to understand our own biases and projections, and to create the spiritual alliances and personal patterns
In practical terms, don’t assume that what you want is the same as what the person wants. Ask what’s wanted, if anything. Ask how you can hold them in thought, prayer, or heart in a way that facilitates what’s wanted. If you don’t agree with what’s wanted, you don’t have to. Just be present. Have compassion for the person and yourself, and put the rest down, again, and again. And if you’re not sure how to do that, it’s time to learn.
If you enjoy this series, check out my book, Life Betwixt – Essays on Animism in the Everyday and Shamanism Among.
The post Life Betwixt – Love and Light and Pattern Recognition appeared first on Soul Intent Arts - Ancient Healing, Modern Shamanism.
March 6, 2017
The Weekly Rune
A wonderful, screeching halt.
Tiwaz is the half-month stave through March 14. Raidho is the intuitive stave, and Isa indicates Nature’s message to us. Read right to left is Tiwaz, Raidho, then Isa.
The half-month rune is set by the runic calendar, and governs for a tad over two weeks. The intuitive stave (meaning, I draw it blind) indicates the life force most available to us, which brings the focus of the half-month rune into sharper focus for the present week. It suggests how we can handle these energies. The planetary stave (also a blind draw) indicates the state and needs of the planet.
Below is a summary of The Weekly Rune. If you’d like to receive the full runecast, subscribe for as little as $5 a month. The full runecast provides more details on how the current runes impact human life force over the next week, and how to best manage the curves and twists therein. With a subscription, you also receive it on Sunday instead of Monday!
Last week, Tiwaz turned our awareness toward an internal overhaul. This “Plan B” rune, forces us into the place of realizing Plan A, usually one’s heart’s desire, isn’t going to work. I know that I said, “wonderful” screeching halt, and nothing about Tiwaz seems wonderful on the surface. It’s one of those staves that leaves people cringing when it comes up in their casts, though if I have a deep fondness for it.
I call Tiwaz the survivor rune, because it carries the battle-worn connotation of having come through some devastating ordeal, but it doesn’t stop there. Tiwaz continues the story through the realization of the need for internal change, manifesting that change, then a radically improved course of life.
This week is the last week we will have with Tiwaz this year. Realize where the process has become precious, and let it go. Put it down, thank it, and back away slowly. It’s not necessary to know where to go, just realize the current trajectory isn’t working, and let it go. The full-stop of Tiwaz is that by releasing the emotional claim of Plan A, Plan B fills itself in. This is the victory closure that Tiwaz brings.
How fitting that Raidho, the rune of travel and how we wll our story, facilitates that process. The elements are in place to become very clear on the current narrative, and how to write it as a healing story. Now is the time to bring it to full initiatory completion.
Write it out, if it helps. Raidho doesn’t have an explicit writing undercurrent, though it’s chock full of plotting, mapping, tracing movement through word and distance. Figurative or literal, this stave indicates great potential for movement, and needed support to do so, well.
Isa as the memo from Nature shows a reprieve to do the above work. The final of the winter trio, Isa or “ice,” represents the inner seed, the sacred life that is never extinguished, in All Things. It hints at a frozen state waiting to burst into bloom, given the proper support and nurture. It is the final days before spring, when the sun is more direct, the ground is warmer, and what we have to bring is about to be unleashed upon the world.
Grow.
Subscribe to the full runecast.
Learn more about the Reclaiming the Runes Intensive and preview course.
Originally published on Soul Intent Arts.
The post The Weekly Rune appeared first on Soul Intent Arts - Ancient Healing, Modern Shamanism.
March 3, 2017
Celebrate the Small Things – Gratitude
My weekly gratitude post, in the Celebrate the Small Things [ongoing] Blog Hop.
I’m grateful for a really awesome couple of weekends with family and friends, to celebrate the Twinkies’ birthday! They had an awesome time, and we enjoyed the freakishly warm winter weather.
I’m glad that I have clarity on a long-standing brain-bender.
I’m really thankful for progress on a book proposal. The transmittal docs are so hard to write!
I’m happy to be teaching my first open-to-the-public class–Intro to Deathwalking in a couple of years.
What are you grateful for this week? How will you show thanks? Who is grateful for you? I am!
This post is part of Lexa Cain’s blog hop, Celebrate the Small Things, along with her co-hostesses L.G. Keltner and Tonja Drecker. Participate by emailing laura.6eg(at)gmail.com to request to hop on, then post your gratitude every Friday. Easiest blog hop ever! Thanks for coming with me on this journey of self-empowerment and collective awareness.
The post Celebrate the Small Things – Gratitude appeared first on Soul Intent Arts - Ancient Healing, Modern Shamanism.
February 27, 2017
The Weekly Rune – Tiwaz
A second wind, need examination, and divinity.
Tiwaz is the half-month stave through March 14. Nauthiz is the intuitive stave, and Sowilo (Sowilu) indicates the planet’s message to us. Read right to left is Tiwaz, Nauthiz, then Sowilo.
The half-month rune is set by the runic calendar, and governs for a tad over two weeks. The intuitive stave (meaning, I draw it blind) indicates the life force most available to us, which brings the focus of the half-month rune into sharper focus for the present week. It suggests how we can handle these energies. The planetary stave (also a blind draw) indicates the state and needs of the planet.
Below is a summary of The Weekly Rune. If you’d like to receive the full runecast, subscribe for as little as $5 a month. The full runecast provides more details on how the current runes impact human life force over the next week, and how to best manage the curves and twists therein. With a subscription, you also receive it on Sunday instead of Monday!
Over the last two weeks, Sowilu has shone on us, reminded us of our divinity, and as such instilled in us some sense of honor. As it is the final rune of the second ætt, it travels with a sense of something completed, reprieve, then something that we can carry forward from that experience.
Meaning ‘Tyr/Tuisto,’ the Germanic god who is also known as Buri, grandfather of Odin and the first being licked from the ice by Audhumla. “What?” you ask. “What’s with all the gods? I thought Odin was the Old Norse god? ”
He is, but Odin’s Buri 2.0.
Indeed, I call it the “Plan B” rune, because it brings a state of realizing Plan A, usually one’s heart’s desire, isn’t going to work. It doesn’t mean a dazzling future isn’t in store, though it’s not going to happen on the current trajectory. And by changing trajectory I don’t mean choose the left turn at Albuquerque, but straight on til Neptune.
That depth of personal change is why Tiwaz carries a battle connotation, not because it requires that we fight a demon or defend ourselves to some foe, but because we have to change our mind about the whole thing. We have to reinvent ourselves on the order of an internal paradigm shift, after which the foe is small potatoes.
Nauthiz, “not this,” clears the way so that we can focus on exactly that mind shift for the next week. Meaning “necessity,” this stave presents a dynamic in which we are at a crossroads. We can cross through, yet we don’t. Why? Because we don’t know what’s on the other side. The hesitation creates a sense of going forward into learning the need, which of course means we can’t meet it. We can’t meet needs we can’t identify. We can’t create momentum to go forward if we’re resisting (dissociating) where we stand. The next week gives us plenty of support to learn the need we’re avoiding, and potentially fill it.
Likewise, Sowilu revisits as the memo from the planet, echoing back through this whole intensity that we can do it, we’ve done it before, and we can bless our growth with honor.
Subscribe to the full runecast.
Learn more about the Reclaiming the Runes Intensive and preview course.
Originally published on Soul Intent Arts.
The post The Weekly Rune – Tiwaz appeared first on Soul Intent Arts - Ancient Healing, Modern Shamanism.
February 24, 2017
New Class: Introduction to Deathwalking
It’s been about two years since I’ve taught an open class. Instead, my focus has been on mentoring and facilitating Initiates in The Spirited Path Two-Year Modern Shamanism Intensive . Why the change? About ten years ago, I observed a pattern in people taking one-off classes in shamanism. People wanted to learn to journey and collect specific techniques of shamanism without learning to be a shaman. Alas, journeying is not all of shamanism.
In theory, that’s fine. Not everyone is cut out for the role of shaman. However, real life demands that you be able to handle the results of using all those techniques, and the path itself eventually demands that you choose to serve a community. In short, the focus has to stop being on you. That’s where taking a hodge podge of one-off classes can create a lot of distress without knowing how to manage it throughout every day, not just when in trance. As a result, I decided to teach the whole kit–living life betwixt–or none of it.
A year ago, it became evident to me that the state of the planet requires more attention to deathwork; meaning, culturally, we don’t really give much attention to it at all, and we’re backed up as a result. I began having clients show up in inordinately high numbers who were being visited by the dead, and they didn’t need just a clearing out of visitors, but skills in how to do that for themselves, quickly and ongoing. At that point I realized that we need many more people doing deathwork, now.
While shamans are trained as deathwalkers, we all bear responsibility to tend death, by which I mean, to create a healthy consciousness in life so that we die well, to be able to identify when someone has not died well, to draw upon the resources available to release those who have not died well. I’m really excited about teaching this material, as those who know me well know deathwalking is my thing. It’s what I’m closest to in shadow realms, it’s my deepest love in shamanism, and my first calling on this planet. If you want to learn more about my experience with deathwalking, check out my book, Real Wyrd – A Modern Shaman’s Roots in the Middle World.
What is deathwork? I’ve blogged quite a lot about what it is, why it’s needed, and how we can all do it. No, we’re not all called to do it as the primary function of our paths or time on Earth. However, because we’re all experiencing time on Earth, part of being good citizens in form is maximizing what we do with that time, and learning how to die well as a result of it.
Our life’s mission is to have lived well enough to die well, so that at life’s end, we can be an empowered Ancestor to those left behind.
There are many ways to accomplish that closure, and this class gives glimpses into some of the possibilities. It gives an overview of considerations at the point of death, knowing when souls haven’t moved on, how to work with them, and the impact of this work on the entire planet.
This class is ideal for those who have some journeying experience, though those who have none will benefit. Introduced is the role of deathwalker, significance of deathwork, and impact that living well has on dying well. It will involve light “Middle World” travel, and stimulating a lifelong goal to be a well ancestor through our own lives.
You won’t learn everything about deathwalking in three hours. You won’t master deathwalking in this class, though you will gain insight into how it fits into your path, where you could go further with it, and how awareness around dying well benefits All Things.
It’s a live online class through Zoom, though if you’re a local and want to gather for the class, make arrangements by contacting me. This is a 3-hour class, and is $120. You can register online to reserve your seat.
If you have questions, feel free to contact me.
As ever, thank you for the work you do here. #beyourcommunity
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February 20, 2017
The Weekly Rune
Divinity, self-care, and change.
Sowilo (Sowilu) is the half-month stave through 27 February. Berkana (Berkano) reversed is the intuitive stave, and Ehwaz reversed indicates the planet’s message to us. Read right to left is Sowilo, then Berkana, followed by Ehwaz reversed.
The half-month rune is set by the runic calendar, and governs for a tad over two weeks. The intuitive stave (meaning, I draw it blind) indicates the life force most available to us, which brings the focus of the half-month rune into sharper focus for the present week. It suggests how we can handle these energies. The planetary stave (also a blind draw) indicates the state and needs of the planet.
Below is a summary of The Weekly Rune. If you’d like to receive the full runecast, subscribe for as little as $5 a month. The full runecast provides more details on how the current runes impact human life force over the next week, and how to best manage the curves and twists therein. With a subscription, you also receive it on Sunday instead of Monday!
For the last week, Sowilu has has challenged us to find our place in divinity, which points to realizing the divinity within ourselves. Meaning “sun,” this stave is very charged for us. Everything we are, have, have been, will have, will be is connected to this rune. Our compass for finding our way through season, each day, each year rests in the heart of this rune. For us, the sun is everything, and this second week with Sowilu escorts through this final rune of the second ætt. We will get up close and personal with our ability to recognize what is wonderful and timeless in ourselves, and how to carry it forward.
Meaning ‘midwife,’ Berkano gets distilled to various feminine aspects of nurture, care, medicine, tending. It encapsulates the ability to provide those components of care without being emotionally involved, again, with outcome.
This rune indicates that between all that standing in our power, we need to remember to take care of ourselves. Take time to do that, this week. It may be something that’s sheer pleasure, a break, a treat, the ability to notice a gorgeous day. It’s there. It’s always there. Berkana is just reminding us to make use of it.
Ehwaz reversed is refreshing, in that even its merkstave meaning is still fairly upbeat: restlessness. It hints at an itch, maybe the inability to go as quite deeply as we’d like. Maybe we need to examine the mundane a bit more. It’s not the disruptive “change” energy of Thurisaz or Hagalaz. Still the motivation to follow through on something that’s needed to shift comes this week, and it’s a good thing. Being so well-aligned with our divinity, so self-nurtured, we’re ready to make that change.
Remember, as we change individually, so are others around us.
Subscribe to the full runecast.
Learn more about the Reclaiming the Runes Intensive and preview course.
Originally published on Soul Intent Arts.
The post The Weekly Rune appeared first on Soul Intent Arts - Ancient Healing, Modern Shamanism.
February 17, 2017
Celebrate the Small Things – Gratitude
My weekly gratitude post, in the Celebrate the Small Things [ongoing] Blog Hop.
I’m grateful for herbs staving off allergies/sinus infection.
I’m glad that whatever season it is, we’re headed into actual spring.
I’m happy to see family this weekend!
What are you grateful for this week? How will you show thanks? Who is grateful for you? I am!
This post is part of Lexa Cain’s blog hop, Celebrate the Small Things, along with her co-hostesses L.G. Keltner and Tonja Drecker. Participate by emailing laura.6eg(at)gmail.com to request to hop on, then post your gratitude every Friday. Easiest blog hop ever! Thanks for coming with me on this journey of self-empowerment and collective awareness.
The post Celebrate the Small Things – Gratitude appeared first on Soul Intent Arts - Ancient Healing, Modern Shamanism.
February 13, 2017
The Weekly Rune
Divinity, a self-check, and caution.
Algiz is the half-month stave through 13 February, at which point Sowilo (Sowilu) moves to the fore until 27 February. Laguz reversed is the intuitive stave, and Algiz reversed indicates the planet’s message to us. Read right to left is Sowilo, then Laguz reversed, followed by Algiz reversed.
The half-month rune is set by the runic calendar, and governs for a tad over two weeks. The intuitive stave (meaning, I draw it blind) indicates the life force most available to us, which brings the focus of the half-month rune into sharper focus for the present week. It suggests how we can handle these energies. The planetary stave (also a blind draw) indicates the state and needs of the planet.
Below is a summary of The Weekly Rune. If you’d like to receive the full runecast, subscribe for as little as $5 a month. The full runecast provides more details on how the current runes impact human life force over the next week, and how to best manage the curves and twists therein. With a subscription, you also receive it on Sunday instead of Monday!
For the last two weeks, Algiz has shown us what protection is needed to be who we are in the world, and how our formulation of self-protection is inclusive of the spirits we frequent, and the beings we love. This awareness, relationship, and practice segue nicely into Sowilo, which closes the second ætt. Meaning “sun,” this stave calls to mind the force behind the sun, which shines on us, so that we may shine on others. In that light (pun), it’s about divinity and remembering our place in it, that we are it.
As such, Sowilo brings a certain pause, a recognition of the closing of something, and awareness of another coming in. Moreover, it highlights how the two are related, and that we need to sustain momentum even in transition. At such junctures we become keenly aware of not focusing on outcomes and beginnings, but on how we sustain divinity within, throughout.
Laguz reversed implies that we’re not in sync with what the elements can provide, at this time, and that we will need to self-check emotions around this. There is a way to move forward. There is a way to re-sync with natural flow and stay abreast with it. Once we can stop feeling [ashamed, frustrated, angry, stupid, fill in the blank] about being out of joint, we will be able to find that flow, balance into it, and regain needed balance for the current demands.
Algiz reversed brings the planet’s message to us, and it speaks of a need for caution. When it’s upright (brightstave), this rune means protection. While these can seem somewhat like the same thing, they don’t come from the same place, energetically. The difference is, protection indicates an active stance that we can take, because we can, because we are capable of doing so, because it’s well-rounded wisdom to embody. Caution indicates a need to take care, because something is going on that we need to employ defense to thwart.
Whatever is on the horizon that seems shaky, is. And consider that the shakiness may be on our end, not in the dynamic before us. Just stay aware when the thing as it’s presented doesn’t match the way the thing feels. Honor instincts around this, and take the steps needed to ground into known protections and power. It’s not a time to try new tactics, though employing the Home Spirits in a more thorough manner may just be the trick.
This week is favored for understanding what power we have, have always had, and always will have. Actually remembering that fact and holding space with it is the challenge. We’ll be a bit on our own in doing that for now, as the elements will feel distant despite that they are within reach. We need to be careful about things that don’t jive.
Subscribe to the full runecast.
Learn more about the Reclaiming the Runes Intensive and preview course.
Originally published on Soul Intent Arts.
The post The Weekly Rune appeared first on Soul Intent Arts - Ancient Healing, Modern Shamanism.
February 10, 2017
Celebrate the Small Things – Gratitude
My weekly gratitude post, in the Celebrate the Small Things [ongoing] Blog Hop.
It’s been a while since I’ve posted on this hop. Holy cats, lots of stuff going on.
I’m grateful for sustained minimization of pain, which is directly related to being able to sleep more than 4 hours a night for the last month. Huzzah!
I’m thankful for clarity, even if it comes with no clear direction for how to proceed.
I’m thankful for ethical people who do what they say they’re going to do.
I’m relieved that my son’s diagnosis has come so early in his life, and that what I’ve been through may inform him to make better decisions about his own health, later.
What are you grateful for this week? How will you show thanks? Who is grateful for you? I am!
This post is part of Lexa Cain’s blog hop, Celebrate the Small Things, along with her co-hostesses L.G. Keltner and Tonja Drecker. Participate by emailing laura.6eg(at)gmail.com to request to hop on, then post your gratitude every Friday. Easiest blog hop ever! Thanks for coming with me on this journey of self-empowerment and collective awareness.
The post Celebrate the Small Things – Gratitude appeared first on Soul Intent Arts - Ancient Healing, Modern Shamanism.
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