Dismemberment
one of the many processes using shamanic journeying
It sounds gruesome, right? Well, I guess sometimes it can be. But, needs must.
This is a ceremonial process that is done using the skill of shamanic journeying. We go into the Middle World of Dream and huddle up with our team, asking them to step aside while unknown forces are invited in to tear us apart. Then, the team is called back to put us together anew, leaving out any parts that no longer serve us on our Earth Walk.
The ways this shows up in our lived experience varies for everyone, and it’s also different every time we live through the ceremony. I will be putting myself through this journey starting on December 21st, and I have no idea when it will end. Or, what the outcome will be. All I know is that the time is nigh.
Sometimes we get stuck, for a long time. Sometimes, that stuckness requires a tow truck to get us out and back on the road of life again.
The Dismemberment Ceremony is that tow truck.
This article was originally published on Substack. You can read the original here.
Video Transcription:
Hello. Well, you get me fresh-faced today. I thought I'd share a little storytime. I don't know about you, but Election Day, I decided to book a session with my very talented, very witchy therapist. Hopefully you did the same. It was one of the best decisions I've made all year, having a therapy appointment on Election Day.
There were many tears shed throughout the day and many tears shed after with sighs of relief and open bottles of champagne and being Gen X, I have lived through all too many shenanigans as far as our government is concerned and all of the whiplash from courting fascism to just being like normal and then back again. And so, of course, I am left cautiously optimistic. I do have to admit that Hakeem Jeffries stole the majority of that cautious optimism. And now it's just like, OK, we got to get to work, man. I got to get to work. But this is not a story about that. As some of you might know, I am...
I'm in the middle of my launch for a program called Dancing in the Dreamtime, which is a bare-bones six-week, actually seven-week course this year about teaching people how to do shamanic journey work. And this is shamanic journey work using just a drum. A lot of what we teach in this course, what I teach in this course, is applicable if you're doing assisted journeys, if you know But I don't do that. I have done so many psychotropic substances in my life that I apparently am opting to do my spiritual journeys in other ways.
So one of the things that is coming up is this transit that we're still in as far as Venus in retrograde in Scorpio. I happen to be somebody into astrology who loves Scorpio. Scorpios are the best lovers of the zodiac. And although it can be a challenging Star sign and to have as your Sun sign or your anywhere, placed anywhere on the chart. It's also such a, it provokes such rich inquiry. I mean, speaking of the mysteries of life, Scorpio is the place of those mysteries. And allows us the potential for at least three levels of understanding. So I bring all of that awareness into my personal excavation of the material that Venus in retrograde and Scorpio has been you know, allowing us in this life at this moment in time. For me personally, during this transit. So as I look back, as I look at what Venus and retrograde has been dredging up in my own life, of course, I am seeing some patterns there. If I look back to the material that was brought up a year and a half ago, that wasn't a transit through Scorpio, I don't believe. But also then looking back throughout my life on what this material has been presented or has presented to me in its cycles. How do I put this succinctly?
It's the same material with a different flavor in a different area. And that's Scorpio's genius. So I am currently in a very long-term, really wonderful, intimate partnership. But for so much of my sexually active life, I hadn't been. So when I came to the work of Shamanic Journeying, it was because I was in a bad place. I had just encountered some traumatizing, deeply traumatizing, experiences in my personal life. And there was also this other stuff going on with my most intimate interpersonal relationships. I was in abusive relationships, physically abusive, emotionally abusive, psychologically abusive. And I was aware, but I still wasn't really able to move beyond them.
So I went to go see Jill Kurgendall and to do some, to start my work doing soul retrievals. So the way that every spiritual teacher in my life has taught me, when I go to work with them, like this happened with the medicine woman in Pennsylvania as well. I was like, okay, we're going to go. I'm going to live with this woman in Pennsylvania and I'm going to see how she Treats all of her clients and I'm going to learn like that. Oh, no, no, no. This is not how that went. I got there and then two days into it, I went through delirium tremens, but I wasn't an alcoholic. So how could that be? I come down on the third day after having slept for 19 hours. And she goes, and I said, what is happening to me? Like my teeth hurt, my hair follicles hurt. What is happening? She goes, oh, well, you're going through withdrawals. Withdrawals? What are you talking about? Yeah. I had a suspicion that you have sensitivities to dairy and gluten. And from my expert opinion, I would say that that's what's happening. You are experiencing withdrawal. From the opioid-like substances contained within wheat and milk. So there's caseinoids and glutenoids and they act similarly to opioids in our system. A little tidbit of information for you there. So just as an example, but every spiritual teacher that I've ever worked with has worked like that. You think you're going to go in and they're going to treat other people and you're going to learn, you know, externally, but you don't. They're teaching you through whatever your material is that you need or want to transform and heal.
So this was the case when it came to the shamanic journey work that I engaged in with Hank Wesselman and Jill Kirkendall and then later in my exploration of the material with the Lakota and the Ojibwe and the Hopi and the Choctaw and so on and so forth. So shamanic journeying, that's how I came to shamanic journeying. I was in college. I had a traumatic experience happen one spring break. And I came back and I was like, ooh, I need help. And then I did the work and I got the, I think I did three soul retrieval sessions with Jill kind of back to back.
And then I was like, oh, I want to learn this. I want to learn how to do this. And so I went down to Esalen and I learned through Hank. Where am I going with this? The Venus retrograde, what's happening? Okay, so it was very shortly thereafter that I recognized, uh-huh, the reason or, you know, that so much of this stuff is happening is, you know, well, there's lots of reasons, but that needs to change. And so I started doing the work to, in my personal life, to do what it took to help shift those habits. Unfortunately, that didn't go quickly.
I studied with Hank and Jill for five years at that moment in time, with Jill for five years. And then I met the man who would walk me through my Saturn return. And he brought me to rock bottom. In my love addiction, a lot of people talk about addiction through substance. I have flirted with substance, of course, more heavily with some than others, but the real addiction in my life, the one that brought me to literal You know, rock bottom where I was evicted. I had let go of every important relationship in my life. I fucked off the work in my life and ruined my reputation. And that was love. That was a love addiction. And the unfortunate thing with a love addiction is that you are addicted to seeking love outside of yourself. In places that are guaranteed to not be able to give that to you, that's the addiction is that you're one myself. I'll speak for myself. I was constantly seeking love externally.
I was constantly seeking the validation for my existence as a human outside of myself. And particularly with men. I've dabbled with women, but women were always just too emotionally available. Plus, I really like men. It has been unfortunate at some points in my life. But I digress. If one was A drug addict and, you know, obviously an abuser and just really emotionally unavailable, you know, an alcoholic. Oh my God, he was the one. He was the one for me. And if I could just make him love me, then I would have the validation that I needed. To know that I deserved to be here. That I was worthy of existing in the flesh. Well, I'm sure that you know how that turned out. It turns out the way it always turns out. Because their stuff is not about me. I would, there's no - they are incapable of love and... There's no amount of Beauty and the Beast that will ever change that.
So after I hit rock bottom, I came to that conclusion. And that is a lot of what allowed me to get into my relationship with my husband. And he and I have done a lot of work together as far as growth and transformation. And that was really, for me, the first level of the material that's coming up in this particular Venus retrograde that wants to be transformed. That was really when I started to see, oh, I'm not honoring the connection that I feel with this person because It is so available because he is so reciprocal. He's like my stepdad. He's not the biological dad. He's not the real one. He's the one for now. And of course, now 14 years later, he is the real one. He's the one for right now and he's the one for the future. And things are grand. And a lot of how I got there was through the use of shamanic journeying techniques and tools.
So when Venus went retrograde, what, about 18 months ago, there was another pattern that wanted to come up that has the same flavor, we can say, that's kind of in the same food group, perhaps. Because everything for me always goes back to food. And it was about friends and community. And again, seeking that external validation for existing through the acceptance of friends and community. I don't know if you can hear that. One of my friendly neighborhood ravens just came to Add her two cents, apparently. How fun is that? Well, that was fun going through, I don't know, some of that material, right?
Things happened through the pandemic and in the aftermath of the pandemic that triggered kind of a diaspora, we could call it, of friends and community. And a shift and a change in that realm. And there was so much that where I felt I just took it really personally. Some of it was personal, but it had the flavor of like, oh, you know, like I was seeking that external validation for existing and being worthy of love. Venus. So now this time around, things are coming up in the same context, only this time it's with other material. Isn't that interesting?
There is... Oh, I'm thinking of Fairbairn, but I think Fairbairn had a different point. A concept in psychology that really says that the relationship that you have with one person is really the relationship that you have with everybody. So the relationship that you're seeking either to transform or to attract and intimate partnership is really like whatever you have currently in intimate partnership is really the same relationship that you have with The post person or the random stranger walking down the street or the barista at the coffee house or your friends or whatever it is. But all of this is leading me to that conversation with my therapist on Tuesday of this week. And we were talking about dancing in the dream time, shamanic journeying, this Venus retrograde that has It felt emotionally very brutal, but of course it is all in service to our evolution, our soul's evolution, our growth and development. If it's hurting, don't stop. Keep going. Move through it. Feel the feelings. Get the wisdom. Keep going. Move through it. So I am. I'm here. I'm moving forward. Get a sip of tea. All right. So one of the things that my therapist was able to reflect back to me was like, hey, There's a lot of narratives here that seem to be running the show that are just completely irrelevant in life. There's nothing really of substance to them anymore. Maybe it's time to kill those old narratives. You're not killing aspects of yourself. Killing off, you're like ejecting the tape, the old tape that is still stuck on repeat. And that was so brilliant.
It was so I mean, of course, that's that's a good therapist job. And there was something about the way that she put it, because she's also trained in shamanic journeying through Pretty much the same schools that I got trained through. So I was trained by Hank Wesselman and Jill Kirkendall, but they were trained by Michael Harner. And Michael Harner is the person who trained my therapist's teacher for this material, if you needed pedigree. In our conversation, it came to my mind that This would be a good time and this would be great material to do a ceremonial dismemberment around. How exciting. It sounds brutal, doesn't it? A dismemberment. And it certainly can be.
I don't want to make it seem like It isn't. Some dismemberment processes are more gentle than others. Of course, you can ask for them to be gentle. Pardon me. And sometimes you just get what you get. So in shamanic journeying, we visit the dream time. We use, in the technique that I teach, it's a pan-shamanic Process meaning that it doesn't extract from anyone's culture to do this style of shamanic journeying. Every culture has their own practices, but this is a pretty universal tool. So, um, we use a steady drumbeat to shift our reality or our awareness, um, And so, you know, technically speaking, you and I, we're engaged in conversation right now.
Our brain waves are operating at about a gamma state, if I'm not mistaken about that. And when we do shamanic journeying, that steady drumbeat helps to lower our brain waves down between the alpha to theta state, which is the state that they're at in REM sleep. Or under hypnosis or when we're really like involved in a television show or when we're watching TV. So what happens is that the conscious, creative, linear mind gets to take a backseat. And the perceiving mind gets to come to the fore and see what's happening. And we go into the middle world of dream and we visit our secret garden and we do some gardening work or we visit our spiritual council in the upper world or maybe we go into the underworld to seek wisdom and advice from the earth devas and the elementals and so on and so forth.
Um, so in the process of doing a dismemberment, I will go into the middle world of dream and I will gather around with my spiritual team. Um, you know, my, my spirit animal, my, um, advisors, my defense, uh, team, my spiritual council, my Alma Kua, which is the oversoul. And anyone who wants to show up to be of support for this process. And I'm going to ask for them to step away in this ceremony and allow whatever wants to come in to tear me apart. And hope for the best. So whatever that is, I don't know what it will be. I'll let you know. But that's gonna, that's, I'm That's part of it. So it comes in, it tears one apart. And then we get to call in our spiritual team again, and then they put us back together, leaving out anything that no longer serves our life. And then we get to move on down the road, free.
This definitely feels like material that I'm ready to kill. I'm ready for it to die. I'm ready to be free from these old narratives. My life has changed significantly. And I do attribute that to all of the work that I've done with Shamanic Journeying, which is why I'm so passionate about teaching others this work. I have done a lot of therapy. I've done a lot of coaching. I've done a lot of, you know, I've had a lot of friends who have offered their unsolicited advice and sought out their advice and gone to a lot of therapy. And nobody knows what's right for you, except for you.
Nobody knows what the right job is. Nobody knows where the right school to go is. Nobody knows who the right teacher for you is or what the right home is or whatever choice it is that you need to make at this moment in time. Nobody knows but you. And so this shamanic journeying is, Hank had called it, the path of direct revelation. And I just enjoy that so much. I love that. It's such a beautiful frame of reference for this work. Shamanic journeying is what helps. Like, I keep saying, one does not need an interpreter for the word of God. As I've shared with you, I have just recently completed a Mary Magdalene priestess training. And that's a lot of what Mary Magdalene speaks to in the Gospel of Mary, is that we all have access to God inside of us. We don't need any external validation. Full circle.
I just wanted to share all of that with you, that coming up shortly, I think when the container Dancing in the Dreamtime closes, it closes on December 21st, we have our last Q&A session. By the way, this is the last year for a while, I think, that I'm going to be teaching this material live. I really... I love teaching it. And what I really want more than anything is for people to just be trained in it so that we can start playing. I don't want to be focusing on the basics anymore. I want to be taking us off to newer and bigger and better journeys and intentions so that we can start to actually move and shake in this world. But that's another, that'll be another post for right now. No, I'm inviting you in to be on this dismemberment journey with me. So this is, sometimes the question comes up, well, why? Why would I give a shit about shamanic journey?
Like what purpose is that for in my own life? And one of those things is soul retrieval. So if you feel like you have endured a lot of trauma in this lifetime or others, Soul retrievals can be incredibly effective at feeling more connected to the life that you're living and also in stopping cycles of crazy, morbid depression. Soul retrieval is actually also very effective in helping with cycles of addiction. This dismemberment process is something where I feel like I've been stuck, like really stuck. I've done so much work in the particular area of my life that is coming up during this Venus transit and retrograde in Scorpio. And there's not enough... Brain computation that's going to get me out of this rut. And as we've already addressed, it's an old narrative that I want to kill. I want it dead. I don't want it part of me anymore. It doesn't belong here. It's not like, you know, an inner child. It's not part of my personality. It's like, it's a phantom.
That is haunting me and it needs to go. And that's why I kept thinking dismemberment. Dismemberment scares me. I will not lie about that. I had a spontaneous dismemberment when I started to go into my Saturn return and it led, it was brutal. It was brutal. It was incredibly effective. At moving me out of patterns in my life that would have probably killed me. But it wasn't a pleasant experience. So I am nervous about what is coming up right now. Uh, I -I... There There's certain aspects of my life that I don't want to change. I don't want to risk that stuff going away. And sometimes, sometimes you gotta take that risk and settle into trust about your team. Your team having your back. Also, I will say, you can ask. You can ask for these processes to be gentler. But yeah, who knows? I don't know if I'm going to ask about that. I don't know.
I am a clown, so sometimes, more often than not, in order to get it, I have to get smacked upside the head with the proverbial cast iron frying pan. Hopefully it'll be like a little one. Anyway, I wanted to share that with you just in case you might find that you're in the same position and you think that maybe a dismemberment process might be something you'd like to talk about. Also, how is this Venus transit going for you? Is it good? I mean, it's supposed to be good. We'll see. Maybe 10 more days. We'll see how it goes. But if you wanted to drop me a comment, I'd really appreciate it. I love hearing what's going on for people in their lives.
All right. Well, I'll be in touch. Thanks for being here. I'll see ya.