• Blog
Drumming The Soul Awake Blog

Breaking the Hypnosis of Fear

1/11/2021

2 Comments

 
Picture
We are under the new moon of January and this is a powerful time to make two linked prayers that can help you in these charged times. (Remember that when I say "prayer," I mean "calling the tangible partnership of Spirit into the physical plane." In shamanism, prayer is energy work and has effects.)
 
One prayer is to the powers of the north and winter, the great mothers of healing and release, to help you let go of the attachments that have held you down and made you smaller than you really are. The other prayer is to ask the mothers of new life (the east on the medicine wheel) to come a fill you with courage, curiosity, vision and verve. January is filled with celebrations for these mothers, and we'll look at this in a moment.
 
There's an old shamanic adage: where you place your attention, there goes your co-creating power. Human beings are prayer-making creatures. We make prayers all the time, though we often call it daydreaming, musing, or being lost-in-thought. One simple way to shift your energies is to put some focused attention on these two prayers.
 
Option 1: Cleansing the attachment to fear
We are swimming in fear, and fear is like a glue that keeps us attached to the things that we need to let go of. It goes very hard on us when we are hypnotized by fear. When we feel "stuck," it is usually because of the old glue of fear. 
 
When I was in second grade, my family moved from the inner city of Denver, out to the gleaming suburbs. My mother frequently found me in the basement swinging a spoon back and forth in front of my eyes, mumbling, "You're back in the old house…you’re back in the old house…"
 
Many people are doing this right now, spurred on by the hypnotists in charge. And it's going to be very hard on them, because there is no going back; there is only going into a fantasy of what things used to be. Conspiracy theories are grounded in abstract fears that harden into bizarre reality for the one walking that ever-darkening road. Conspiracy theories are a twisted form of prayer-making, of asking Spirit to incrementally help you manifest the darkest world you can imagine. 
 
It's easy to stay glued to the news, and to the anger or schadenfreude on social media, like eating  small doses of gloom-sugar all day long.
 
All of this is completely understandable, because we are in a time of great uncertainty and we are all seeking something to help us make sense of things, some kind of solid ground to stand on, and some way we can bring some control back to life. And I'm not claiming to be free of any of this.
 
But there are options, and Spirit can help us. This profound time we are in offers us two opportunities for creativity, and creativity is the antidote to fear.
 
Fear comes from our animal bodies, and it is a natural response to uncertainty. It helps a lot to just remember that - there's no shame in feeling fear because it's wired into us to keep us alive. However, it's good to remember that we are more than our animal body, and we really don't have to let fear hypnotize us.
 
Asking Spirit to "help me release my attachment to fear" is a potent action right now, in this three days of the new moon of January. Note the wording: it's not "Spirit, take my fears away" it's asking to be released from hypnosis. You'll need to do your own part by putting down the spoon you are swinging in front of your eyes.
 
The Old Bone Mother of the Celtic tradition is an ally in the work of releasing, as she comes to gather the energies and structures in the world (inner and outer) that need to be taken away so that space opens up for new life to emerge. You can ask for her to help, in prayers or meditations or visualizations. A word of caution: when the rational mind begins to chatter that this is all a waste of time, remember, that's just a cover to allow the small mind to continue visualizing the looming disaster, reinforcing the fear, and offering us (often false) ways to feel in control. The small mind wants to keep us locked in the hypnosis of fear. So bring some balance to this "negative prayer work" that is already occurring inside you.
 
The spirits in nature are always ready to help. You can ask the cold air of winter to come, or that incredible bright winter sun, or the bare tree branches, or the fire inside the belly of the mother earth, or those sharp winter stars to help you dissolve the glue of fear. What powers do they have? The cold wind can make the fear brittle so it slakes off. The bright sun can evaporate the fears. The bare branches are our teachers in letting go. The stars are like scissors. Ask them in these kinds of words to help release old fear attachments. You have so much help in this. Ask the spirit of cleansing winter to snap loose the calcified energies of fear that hypnotize you and keep you attached to old ways that are no longer useful in the emerging world.

Picture
Option 2: Infusing inspiration into the bones
As the doors to the east on the great wheel of life open, this is a potent time to ask the great mothers of new life to help you weave a new way of being. In the pagan European tradition – which can also be called the European shamanic tradition – January is populated with celebrations to ancient mother goddess figures whose job is weave, spin or midwife the new shape of things.
 
In Italy, The grandmother faery queen, La Befana comes to sweep out the old stored energy out of the house, and give candy to the children. In Ireland, St Latiaran of Cuillinn, is celebrated for drawing the hot coal ("seed of new fire") out of the forge to take it home to re-light her hearth. In the Balkans, January 9th is a day to celebrate midwives. In ancient Rome, Carmenta, goddess of prophecy and childbirth was celebrated in January. Goddesses of destiny and fate – the weavers and spinners of the next shape of life - are often celebrated in mid-January (for example, the Scandinavian Norns and the Greek Moirai).Finally, at the end of the month, the super-goddess, Brigid of the Celtic world emerges to infuse us with inspiration. I'll be offering some beautiful work with Brigid soon.
 
The prayer to these Mothers of the New Shape can be as simple as "infuse me with inspiration." That word, inspiration, is shorthand for the delight of the new shape emerging, the regenerative power of the warmth stirring in the belly of the great mother that is always birthing the new into this world. Ask the Mothers of the east to protect you while in labor, and help you replace old attachments with new curiosity and vision.

These two prayers made at this time can shift your underlying energy and feed the emergence of new energies. 

Blessings of the Mothers of Healing and Inspiration be yours. ​

2 Comments

Summoning Trust in a land of Mistrust

1/4/2021

4 Comments

 
Picture
We have to find a place to put our trust. It is crucial for human beings to trust something, because we need trust as much as we need food and love. I'll have two practical suggestions for this later in this writing,  but, first, a little context.
 
Maybe you have come across the idea of "Soul Ages" – the notion that each of us progresses through many lifetimes, learning more each time about how to be a human being. The five soul ages are: infant, baby, young, mature and old. The idea is not unlike the life of a single person as they grow and mature. In the ideal, I am wiser at 63 than I was as a toddler. On the flip side, I cannot expect a toddler to understand or behave by the rules of a 63 year old.

(Once I watched two women approach each other walking their dogs. One dog erupted into barking - leaping and jerking on its leash. The woman yanked the leash and grabbed her dog's face, admonishing it: "Gizzy! What's the matter with you?! You're acting like an ANIMAL!")
 
For purposes of this writing, I'll shrink soul age down like this: Infant and baby souls, having fewer lifetimes in their tool belt, are more focused on survival. Young souls are more focused on success inside the cultural structures into which they have been born. Mature and older souls turn more attention inward, and place more focus on relationships, with all of their subtleties, grey areas, and flexibilities.
 
There has been a great amount of writing about how conservatives and progressives occupy actual different realities. A different lens on the world can be how people of different soul ages live in different worlds. A baby soul may see danger in the same place that an older soul sees a curiosity.
 
Soul Age is a complex set of spiritual ideas that can be helpful in navigating your life, and, like all spiritual frameworks, these ideas are subject to misinterpretation for many reasons. Refrain from assuming a younger soul is more stupid or less compassionate than an older soul. Here is a good article on soul age and the many ways this big idea is misinterpreted.
 
One way to view what is happening on a global scale is that our species is moving from a predominantly younger soul age into an early mature stage. We are in a time where that movement – centuries in the making - is becoming undeniably visible and palpable, largely because for the first time our species' history, it is so clear that national or tribal boundaries simply cannot protect us from the interrelatedness of all life. There are many more older souls incarnating into the world now. This is driving much of the shifting politics, and inspiring much of the backlash and resistance from the prevailing young soul culture. I find this a hopeful idea, and it speaks to why people who are interested in energy work or shamanism should spend some effort blessing. with prayer and ceremony, those who are coming into the world, to give them strength.
 
As prevailing structures and institutions are challenged or collapse, younger souls can easily feel a passionate desire to get back to "normal." It's easy for them to see enemies all around them, because the main place they put their trust is in "tradition," which seems under assault. For younger souls, different or new often equals bad.
 
Older souls may see systemic changes as opportunities to improve relationships between one another, and between humans and all other life. They’ve seen structures collapse many times in their previous lives, and they understand that, on a soul level, there's no stopping the re-shaping of the world, because that is how this universe works. Every re-shaping brings about new structures. As the REM song says, it is never the end of the world, only the world as we know it.
 
Many dinosaurs never saw a flower, because flowers came after the dinosaurs were extinct. If a dinosaur had preached on a street comer about a world covered in flowers, they may have been called insane and locked up. (This idea is hotly debated, but it's such a good image that fills me with such hope in the future that I use it anyway.)
 
So, you're living in a young soul culture groaning with the pain of stretching and expanding what it puts its trust in.
 
As I said earlier, humans absolutely need to have trust in something, or they get crazy.  Maybe rather than asking how we can change someone's political point of view, we can try to discover if there is any place at all that people of different political stances can both trust. Maybe we can work to build a new common trust in something. 
 
On the personal level of you navigating this wild sea of change, I offer two practical suggestions:
  • Find the biggest thing about existence that you can imagine and put your trust there.
  • Identify the most immediate, intimate thing you can trust, and feed it.
 
Toward the first:
People preach, "Trust in God!" But as every real theologian affirms, the historical problem is that we constantly put our trust in a version of God smaller than the real thing. When people say they’ve had it with religion, or that religion has caused only damage throughout history, what they mean is, religious structures, owned and operated by young souls, have wreaked havoc. This can happen from a huge religion all the way down to an individual teaching workshops.

 
Young souls are attracted to becoming high-status leaders, and when that happens, the God they talk about tends to get smaller and smaller, and be more and more about status in the culture - about who is pleasing in the eyes of God, and who is not. Shamanism doesn't really have much of this structure in it, and that's one reason I fell in love with this path.

By the way, this is why there is always a conflict between the priests and the prophets, because the prophet's main job is to arrive with a hammer to smash open the institutions that have shrunk God down smaller than God really is in order to serve the culture's self-identity (for example, making Jesus white, or God as loving the rich most). The prophets are always on the losing end in the short term, but ultimately win out as religions crumble.

 
So, my suggestion is to go as big, and as non-human, as you possibly can in your imagination of Spirit. And using the framework of soul age, think like an older soul: you and Spirit are in a co-creating partnership, not a top-down, judgment-punishment relationship. (I teach about this in my upcoming class on prayer. )

Religions have soul ages, as individuals and cultures do, and if you've left the hierarchical religion of your youth for a more mystical framework, it may be because you no longer resonate with a younger soul religion. (It may also be that the New Age things you gravitated to allow you to activate your young soul with more fun, so be careful about spiritual arrogance. Older soul does not mean more spiritual, it only means a different frame of reference.)

 
Ask Spirit not to rescue you from fear, but to teach you how to transform your fear that makes you (and everything around you) smaller than is true.  Ask Spirt to continue working with you in this lifetime, slowly cooking you and teaching you how to be human, as it has so many lifetimes before this. Put your trust in that Great Spirit, and if you feel ready, ask Sprit directly and unambiguously to step up the work with you, to open new pathways of vision and wisdom in this life because you are now ready after so much practice in previous lives.
 
Toward the second place of trust:
Look to the most immediate and intimate places in your life for what you can trust without question. For many indigenous people, the sunrise is one source for this. The sun may not seem intimate, but it is with you every day, unceasingly, never abandoning you. It gives life to everything on this planet and will always rise, always bathe you in life-giving, life-healing and life-transforming love of life itself, even if there are clouds or cold air between the two of you.

A simple prayer to the sun every morning can actually do wonders. Ask the sun to help you trust life, to illuminate your trust in life. Make that prayer before you do anything else – before you begin worrying or planning the day. The same can be done with the plants around your house and all the creatures, as well as the love of your partner, children, pet, or the land you live on. If you work with deities form any tradition, remember that deities are not giant humans with powers, but forces of nature dressed up in human clothing so they don't scare us away. 
 
In the immediate realm, put your trust in Yale professor Dr. Laurie Santos’s Five Behaviors of Happiness: get social, give thanks, be in the moment, rest and move, be kind.
 
May 2021 offer you kindness, rest, movement, presence, gratitude and communion. 

4 Comments
    Join My Email lLst!
    For Email Newsletters you can trust.

    Archives

    February 2021
    January 2021
    November 2020
    September 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    December 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    June 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    December 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    November 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    December 2013
    October 2013
    August 2012

    Categories

    All

    Author

    Jaime Meyer is a writer and Shamanic Worker living in Minneapolis. 

    RSS Feed

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.