Ecosystems

what unfolded through this summer's giveaway

For the month of June, I offered 22 free micro sessions of shamanic journeying. This offer is, on one hand, part of my marketing strategy. Like any good dealer: the first one is free, but the next will cost you (heh). On the other hand, however, it is part of my larger spiritual practice—The Giveaway. This offer was designed so that all parties would receive the magic of these sessions, whether or not we ever have contact with each other again. And believe me, I received as much as anyone else!

Out of the 22 sessions offered, seventeen humans took me up on it. The intention of these journeys was to connect with a helper in the dreamtime who wants to be of service to you, and to ask if they have anything they want to share. Some folks had elemental spirits show up like Lightning, or the molten iron core of our planet. These are certainly powerful allies. For others, spirits like Firefly, Bear, and Eagle came to offer assistance. These allies are no less powerful than those elementals. What they have to offer is just different. There’s no use in having a chain saw, after all, if what you really need at the moment is a melon baller.

Embedded in this shamanic practice is the ability to view life through multiple lenses—to see the many-layered meaning in things. Part of the great joy for me of reading young adult literature is that it often gives us the imagery to be able to comprehend some of these more esoteric principles of existence. One such example is Lyra’s ability to read the Altheometer in Phillip Pullman’s His Dark Materials series (The Golden Compass). Because her vision has not yet been clouded by puberty, and perhaps also because her Daemon had not yet settled, Lyra was able to see the multiple meanings of any given combination of symbols on the device.

I feel as though our waking life is very much like this, a many layered both/and experience.

When I am walking through my waking life, most of the time I experience this as the mundane, material, it-is-what-it-is experience. A flock of geese is just that, birds migrating for the season. But sometimes the coincidence of that flock passing overhead has a deeper meaning. It is my belief that we humans are creator gods, not just with our hands, but with our entire beings. Almost like those plugged into The Matrix, our very thoughts, our perceptions of reality, co-create the world around us. So, when we are out for our daily walk and Coyote crosses our path, was that really just a coincidence? Or, could that have been a message in response to our thoughts and feelings in the moment?

Personally, I believe it is both. This shamanic practice is one that allows us the discernment to know when a cigar is just a cigar, and when it is one imbued with greater meaning.

As a shamanic practitioner, I have a whole team of allies on the “other side”, but Raven is my primary spirit animal. He is the one I feel is part of me, and I am part of him. As I study the global mythology of this critter, as I make friends with the ravens in my area, as I contemplate their habitat and life-ways, I gain insight into my own ways of being. I find my own personal strengths, and weaknesses. Raven gives me insights into myself as I forge this relationship with my spirit helpers.

Through this process of helping others connect with their own team members over the summer, my understanding of these ways has expanded and deepened. What a lovely thing to be surprised even after 25 years of practice! To learn new things even still is a beautiful gift.

After about five or so sessions, I started to notice some themes popping up. Everyone had some connection to water. Every. Single. One. It might not have been directly, but water showed up in all 17 journeys in some capacity.

Mni Wichoni! Water is Life!

By the end, what became undeniable—the greatest collective insight— was that everything exists in an ecosystem.

When we ask for who wants to show up in service to you at this time, we are generally expecting an individual presence to reveal themselves. We look at the qualities of Rabbit, say, and explore their myth and meaning to be able to apply that to our lives, or the situation at hand, and to gain insight into how to utilize that strength for our own needs. I have done this with Raven when attempting to understand my own Trickster nature, or Bear when grappling with cycles of rest and productivity.

Years ago, I also started to take into consideration each critters’ food choices and habitat. Who are their prey, either flora or fauna. Where do they live? What needs do they have for survival and comfort? Who are their adversaries?

What differed this time around, the greater insight that came through in such a somatic revelation, was that nothing exists in a vacuum. Bear is not just a critter who lives in the mountains and eats fish and berries for dinner, as one who stands alone without interplay and impact on their surroundings. Instead Bear is an integral part of an entire system, a complete web of life, and if Bear is taken out of the equation, the whole web deteriorates.

You can replace Bear with Wolf, or Salmon, or Ant to the same effect.

One client had the entire Savannah show up in service to her. This was when the understanding really started to hit. At first Field Mouse showed up in the journey. Then, it was Elephant. Then I was shown the grasslands. Then, the air that swept through those grasses wanted to be of service. When I asked for the final time who wanted to show up in service to this woman, I was told that it was the entire ecosystem. From that session on, there was a clear understanding that when an individual showed up to be in service, it was never that individual alone. They always come with the entire system of support.

We humans are also critters. We have these lovely brains that are genius at discerning patterns and making meaning. But, these brains also have tricked us into believing that we are individuals living outside of the natural world, and maybe we have even been tricked into believing that we are alone among other humans. Rest assured, we are not alone. We are not individual beings. We are part of a greater ecosystem. That ecosystem and its health is dependent on us. It is dependent on us recognizing how we participate in the whole, living in balance to the best of our abilities, recognizing that we are not greater than or less than, knowing that we are both needed and responsible to all others in this delicate web of life. Our ability to thrive is dependent on the air and the water and the land and the non-human life that surrounds us, as much as all that stuff is dependent on our participation in the flow.

To be empowered then, is to be interdependent. We don’t have to do this Life thing alone. In fact, there is no such thing as “alone”. You are not solely responsible for making things better, or worse. It will take all of us—or none of us. Maybe in that, there is comfort.

The medicine for me that has sprung from these 22 free micro sessions offered in ceremony this summer has been this expanded awareness of our place as humans in the ecosystem of life on this planet. Existence is a hologram and a fractal. We are just one tiny flare in the design of this tapestry, one element of sparkle. We cannot take ourselves out of the picture and have it function in the same way, have the design look the same. Pluck one single thread from a sweater, and the whole thing starts to unravel.

The gift for me has been to hear more keenly those Druid voices of my ancestors, and to know in my bones what they have been reaching through time to tell me for thousands of years. The trees are our Grandfathers. The Water is our life’s blood. The Earth, our Mother. The Rock, our bones. When we look to Eagle for guidance, we would do well to consider the entire habitat and how it plays into that life force when considering how the messages apply to our own lives.

What I took away from your session was the Both/And of it all. I am not the only one responsible for “saving” the world, but I am also not absolved of my responsibility to the whole. You and I are part and parcel with this life. We were meant to be here! We have responsibilities, and we also have support.

Life force runs through all things. We are all one. Mitakuye Oyasin.

This article was originally published on Substack. You can read the original here.