When you were born, inside sterile hospital doors, who read the medicine signs ?Perhaps a crow would have come to the window that morning and cawed 3 times to announce new life and the whole forest would have known you arrived. Perhaps, on the day you were born, a deer would have crossed the meadow to let your Mother know that this child wanted gentleness or a badger took root nearby to say “Teach this one to be strong and to look for meanings beneath the surface, she will need it in her life’s work”.
When I was Midwifing I felt there was “something” there in the placentas. Each one so different that I would stare at them much longer than was needed to be certain they were intact. If I had known about scrying* then, I think I would have laid them out smoothly in a belly sized bowl and dreamed myself inside each one to see if there were any important messages for the Child or the Mother who had both just been born new or anew.
The old arts, like scrying or the reading of Medicine Signs are being replaced by the ‘scientific method’. They are dying. And if people do not know what a Shaman is –they cannot recognize one. If people do not know what a Shaman is – they find it easy to call themselves one.
There
are very few who have faced the deep seeded demons of self importance, self pity and life wounds and emerged truly gifted and humbled by it. Very few have died the Shaman's Death and lived to tell about it. Very few who are willing to walk their Wisdom in the world without title or expectations of fame or wealth. And because of this humility those who truly are Way Showers are often missed. They are quickly passed by because they are not on TV, leaders of a cult or card carrying members of The Shaman’s Union with a framed certificate on the wall from the FDA.And so they often live in poverty and relative obscurity.
For many years I have asked myself what a Shaman is. What is a Medicine Woman?
And after all the asking I think I understand
that, when you are healed, when you are whole, when you are fearlessly free to Love, when you make a healing difference that lasts in the lives you touch,when you no longer care what you are,
when you stop asking,
you simply Become what you Do.
WOW MSO this is a great piece and so true. People are so willing to just believe the "hype" that some self proclaimed shamans put out there that they don't look to see if the healer is healing themself. I believe true Shamans do exist but you have to find them they won't find you!
ReplyDeleteThe last paragraph drove it home for me.
ReplyDeleteIt particularly sparked in me my continued sense of 'wrapping my brain around' No longer caring - - opening up spaces of much greater caring and compassion and letting go of personal identifiers (titles, etc.) being the key to Becoming who you are and what you DO in the world.
I love the many paradoxes of these teachings and how they present so many opportunities to view myself and my impact in the world without so many filters.