Blog – The Shamanic Ceremony

Many years ago, I was in a shamanic ceremony and at a certain point, I just needed to get out of the circle and go out into nature. The people in the space were so attached to their trauma/drama that it sucked all the air out of the space.
While I know healing requires people to move through those emotions that have not been fully felt, expressed, or understood, what was happening in the space felt like an emotional free-for-all, where everyone’s pain had an audience and so it was going to make a point and finally feel heard. Some people need to be seen in their suffering. I have witnessed plenty of healing journeys over the past 40 years of being a healer. But there is a point where expressing something can also become a whip that the ego uses to keep a soul down and not really allowing true healing to happen.
In this case, certain types of moments, (such as that one) are only an event where the soul’s expression becomes a weapon by the ego to keep damaging the psyche over and over again.
In such a moment, there is no actual healing happening. Only the incessant regurgitation of the pain.
As I got outside into nature, the air was cool, the ground was moist and soft, and I felt as if I could breathe. I find in nature are the real tools for healing. In nature there is a balance that allows for the transmutation of energies from our past.
At that point, the shaman even came outside to be in the clear, calm, cool nature energy. He said to me, “What is it about you Americans that you are so attached to your pain? You have money, security, beautiful homes, health, and a lifestyle that most in the world would die for. And yet, you take small things and perseverate around them. Making mountains out of molehills. Creating and extending problems that should be released and accepted as parts of the journey of life.”

I agreed with him and said I did not understand it either. We live in a world with so much opportunity but ignore it in favor of focusing on those things that just unfortunately happen in life.

I find that each person has a process to figure out how to let things go. For some it is harder than others. For those that it seems harder, they seem attached to getting an outcome, an apology, or a reason that will allow them to find peace.
But the universe does not work that way. Most bad things that happened in my life … I never got an apology. I recognized that waiting for something that would never come because the person was either never going to apologize because they did not feel badly about doing it, or they were completely unconscious and never realized that they hurt me … was ridiculous. Holding myself in limbo and misery because of someone’s unconscious self, did not allow me to move forward. If that was the case, then the dark forces win. And I was never about to let the darker forces in life stop me from discovering who I really was.
Waiting for some outcome, like karma coming back around to hit the other person, is an insane waste of precious time. We are not in charge of the timing of when karmic lessons come back around. Waiting for some illusive outcome that will validate our feelings makes no logical sense.
And waiting for some reason that will allow us to find peace also does not work. Often getting cognitive information requires us to research things, educate ourselves, tell ourselves some hard truths, and figure out the many complex interwoven patterns that allowed the situation to occur in the first place.
Real healing does not come from blaming others, wanting them to take responsibility, or avoiding life. It comes when we get miserable enough that the patterns of constriction become so intolerable that we finally decide to change completely. Healing requires us to change … not others.

Healing requires us to take responsibility for our actions, choices, challenges, and circumstances.
Everyone will face something that feels insurmountable in this lifetime. Most will have it so locked down in their body/memory that it colors their experiences for the rest of their lives.
It takes real courage to step completely away from what has occurred to us and instead choose to become what our soul asks from us.
Life gives endless opportunities to shift. The question is, what might that look like going forward in this moment?
Is your soul essence strong enough and trusted enough by your human self … to let it take the reins and show you what you could actually become?
I hope that you have a moment to truly find out. On the other side of the trauma/drama is a type of feeling that is more organic, more true to your core self, and takes much less energy and effort to maintain.

~Suzanne Wagner~