Healing Cycles Of Reflection Native American Medicine Wheels
A medicine wheel is a spiritual tool of the Native American tradition. Within its space, small or large, people look upon the medicine wheel as a reservoir of their thoughts, feelings and actions. The "medicine" is healing in its largest sense - physical, spiritual, and communal. It can be a place for individual meditation, or for group ceremony, singing and dance. Some medicine wheels are historically attributed with these different purposes, and for others the purpose remains unknown. If you make your own medicine wheel, you will have the opportunity to follow your intuition for its ultimate purpose. The guidelines to constructing a medicine wheel can follow Native American traditions or be something more individualistic; modern creators of medicine wheels feel it's best to choose colors, plants and animals that are personally meaningful.
Start by finding a place that is special to you, be it a table, a portion of your garden, or even a floor, as long as it won't be disturbed. To begin, mark a circle, it can be small or large, whatever you have space for. The circular shape honors the cyclical nature of life. Then set stones to mark the Four Directions of North, South, East and West. Look at the traditional accompaniments to each direction indicated below, and choose among them or decide upon objects that symbolize something of significance to you. You can try out different combinations, and even re-arrange your wheel over time as your feelings about it change.
EAST (color: yellow) The East is the direction of new day, where everything is fresh and clean. Use this direction to appreciate the potential for new learning experiences. The revered plant of this direction is the Dandelion - the animal is the Golden Eagle.
SOUTH (color: red) The South is the direction of growth, where everything in life is replenished and in full bloom. Use this direction to taste the ripe fruit of appreciation and not take what you have for granted. The revered plant of this direction is cedar - the animal is the coyote.
WEST (color: black) The West is the direction of spiritual insight, where dreams and visions allow you to go within and appreciate yourself and your Creator. The revered plant of this direction is sage - the animal is the grizzly bear.
NORTH (color: white) The North is the direction of purity, where the life forces of health and healing come forward, and the wisdom of elders is honored. The revered plant of this direction is the Birch tree - the animal is the White Buffalo.
OCEANOS
The Seven Shaman Principles
The World is What You Think It Is
Positive thoughts attract positive people and events, and negative thoughts attract negative people and events.
Corollary: Everything is a dream
Dreams are real and reality is a dream. The only test we use for a reality check is whether or not someone else experiences it. Hallucination means "your dream doesn`t match my dream." "Reality" to a shaman is a mass hallucination, or a shared dream. If this life is a dream and if we can wake up fully within it, then we can change the dream by changing our dreaming.
Corollary: All systems are arbitrary
All meanings are made up and the Absolute Truth is whatever you decide it is. What matters is how well the system works for you, not how true it is (which is an arbitrary concept).
There are No Limits
We experience two kinds of limitations: creative and filtered. Creative limitation assumes the purposeful establishment of limits within an infinite universe in order to create particular experiences, made by God or our own Higher Selves. These enable us to experience life as humans on Earth (to play by that particular set of rules - breaking the rules changes to another game). Filtered limitations are imposed by ideas and beliefs that inhibit creativity rather than enhance it, like beliefs that engender hopelessness, helplessness, revenge and cruelty. They generate focus without the potential for positive action.
Corollary: Everything is connected
The usual metaphor is a web of interdependence.
Corollary: Anything is possible
All you have to do is believe. However, because you are not alone in the Universe, the degree to which something can be shared depends on the beliefs of others around you.
Corollary: Separation is a useful illusion
Pure empathy makes you as helpless as the one suffering. Fear make you lose sight of your role as dreamweaver.
Energy Flows Where Attention Goes
Meditation and hypnosis are simply different techniques for doing the same thing - refocusing your attention toward more positive beliefs and expectations. As states, both are identical conditions of sustained focused attention. Those aspects of your present experience which seem enduring are the effect of habitual sustained focused attention carried on by your subconscious.
Corollary: Attention goes where energy flows
Attention is attracted to all kinds of high energy intensity.
Corollary: Everything is energy
Thought is energy and one kind of energy can be converted into another kind of energy.
Now is the Moment of Power
Karma exists and operates only in the present moment. It is your beliefs, decisions, and actions today about yourself and the world around you that give you what you have and make you what you are. Thanks to memory we may carry over habits of body and mind from day to day, but each day is a new creation and any habit can be changed at any present moment - even if it isn`t easy. You select out of the immense resources of your gene pool those characteristics that best reflect your present beliefs and intentions. Your parents/social background have nothing to do with your present, but what you believe about them now and how you react to those beliefs does.
Corollary: Everything is relative
OCEANOS
Shamanism
Shamanism is the spiritual practices of ancient civilizations and cultures. Shamanism is the oldest healing tradition in the world. The Shaman in history served as the communicator between the physical and the spiritual worlds through various rituals and visualizations. This tradition is observed by modern mankind as a way of returning to its roots.
Our Ancient roots are shamanismÂ…
Our Ancient roots are shamanism wherever we live and whatever sort of culture we have grown up in. It is our spiritual heritage. Look back far enough in time and all of us come from shamanistic cultures. Long before such recent understanding and knowledge of the wider universe using a variety of experiential ways and tools, which are just as applicable today as ever.
The shamanic journey, the trance-dance, the vision quest, the purifying ceremony of the sweat lodge, the Sacred Pipe Ceremony, these are ancient but eternally relevant ways to contact the timeless reality that exists parallel to and just out of sight of the world we so mistakenly call the “real world”. It is here in the everyday that we experience the reflections of who we are, of our actions, our deepest beliefs, our “dream”’, but it is in the non-manifest world of the spirit that the hidden causal interactions take place. Hidden, that is, until we begin to open the doors and “see” with an expanded vision, with the eyes of a Shaman.
Shamanism is like tapping into a vast fund of ancient timeless knowledge which can be practiced anywhere under any conditions. It is about helping us humans to heal the effects of past traumas, to live in an inner state of balance and harmony while dealing with the challenges and vicissitudes of life, to develop the best in ourselves no matter what comes our way, and it is about the quality of how we relate to each other and to the earth. All this is as important now as it ever has been or will be.
Shamanism is a worldview based on the belief that everything in the universe is connected and interdependent. It therefore involves a deep respect for the natural world and its ecosystem. It considers spiritual development to be the most important work we can accomplish and that the world of the spirit is all around us and can be readily and directly accessed by anyone, especially through shamanic rituals and ceremonies.
OCEANOS
The Shamans of Your Life by Milton Redman
Magic words can be like mind candy. They feel good when you hear them and bring up thoughts and sights of magical places. We all have our own private words that do this....just as we all have our own preference for candy ... some like Tofu with Raisins while others, like myself, prefer triple fudge Sundaes with sprinkles on top and acherry on the side to make sure we get our daily serving of fruit.
I have to admit I have my favorite words too. The ones that make me see that magical image of far off places and things I'd love to experience, or be a part of. I ran across one today and as always I was carried away. But today was a bit different....For some reason I went beyond the dream and went into the word itself. What I learned was an eye opener for sure....
The word was Shaman. When I hear Shaman I always see an old Indian, his face lined with the wrinkles of wisdom and timelessness, Dancing around a fire and calling forth the great spirit to bless and guide his people. Or I see an Eastern Mystic who climbs a rope that is attached to nothing and charming the snake that kills with one bite. For me the Shaman was someone with a spirit greater and deeper than I would ever know. A gift if you will, to those of us seeking a higher understanding...
So today as I dreamed of the image and drifted off to that special idea I held....I also got out my dictionary, which is as old as time itself, and looked up the word. This is what I found:
Shaman: (Noun). A mystical person who uses magic for the purpose of curing the sick, Divining the hidden, and controlling events.
At first that seemed about right to me. but then a few glitches began to appear, and then several others...And suddenly the word Shaman took on a whole new meaning. Almost in a flash what I had held as out there and beyond me came home, and I found Shamans that I'd never even known existed.
Grandmothers.
That's right. Grandmothers.
I'll be the first to admit that there a few Grandmothers that are not involved in the lives of their grandchildren. I personally haven't met any but I'm sure they exist. And good lord do I remember mine....And the definition of Shaman fit her to the bone....
"A mystical person who uses magic for the purpose of curing the sick."
My Grandmother could do that in a heartbeat. It didn't matter what anyone had she could tell them something or another that would help, or cure, whatever ailed them. And the magic that flowed from her was unreal. If my brother or sisters or any one of my cousins came down with a fever or cough she would stretch the sick one out on the bed and slap some Vicks Jelly on their chest and some on their upper lip and maybe a cool rag across their forehead and it always seemed she said a prayer as she was doing it. It always worked too. If we had been able to stand the smell of the Vicks I'm sure we'd have all stayed in bad health just to be the center of her attention.
A grandmother can make pain vanish with just a kiss. Instant pain relief, its got to be magic. On many occasion I'd come in the house and be crying cause I scraped my knee or hit my head, and my Grandmother would come over and hold me in her arms and kiss the boo boo away and the pain would be gone.
Just like that. I've seen my children's grandmother do the same thing to them as well, and many other grandmothers have done it too. I know, I've seen it with my own eyes. I'd just like to see one of those eastern mystic rope climbers try and do a miracle as great as that!!! And the next part of the definition is even better.
Divining the hidden
Superman would need glasses if he had to do an eye test against a Grandmother. They can not only see thru walls but right thru the stories you make up totry and keep them from knowing you and your cousin was up to no good. I'd begin a story of part truth and mostly lies and before I'd finish the second sentence I could see in her eyes she wasn't buying it....and she would glare down at us with what had to be contempt. And my lies would get bigger and bolder as my cousin began to whimper. I'd be sweating bullets as I tried to save the hide of us both and still she would glare until somebody broke.....and in the end there was no doubt she knew the whole truth before she even called us up before her.
But Grandmothers also know when your hurting inside and when a talk is better than a kiss. They can slap a sort of Vicks jelly on the soul of a teenager who's heart has been broken for the first time. It still smells just as bad but helps just as much.
We each have those hidden parts of ourselves that we know are own private secrets. And our Grandmothers know them too. And love us enough to keep them secret.
And controlling Events
Now this is an area where there is a lot of diversity in the Shaman Grandmother....Its just a matter of her own personal style.
Some grandmothers are nothing short of the General marching off into war as they set up family events and say who's to be where and when. Others have a more subtle approach, giving out idea's and suggestions that the younger generation had better damn well follow. And many others just go with the flow and still have it their way, In that strange shamanistic way of theirs.
Magic doesn't mean you have to make airplanes disappear or cards jump out of the deck. It means you can make someone else better, take away pain with a kiss, pull a smile from the one that's down and give love to the world so it will be better.
I now believe Grandmothers may be the greatest Shamans who ever existed.
