Karl

Sure, I would count it. What might help is if you set a simple intent before trying to journey - that way, you're not simply sort of wandering around. But keep it simple! If you're listening to something, you want to kind of let it "fill" your thoughts, and also hold the intent you set before as you do it.

Makes sense. But if you recap (current) relationships, it can often change the nature of them. It can make the other person very uncomfortable, as they feel things have somehow changed - that you're more "distant" or such - but they can't explain it.

It's pretty important to compress your energy. You can also use a small bathroom or a corner or something, if it's a problem. You just want to have your energy 'squeezed' by something substantial to bring it in closer. Often it's helpful at the beginning to just recap the day, once per day, just recap the events. Then, as things come up, you can follow them into other memories. Avoid traumatic memories, or current relationships/kids

What do you feel like is happening? or what feelings are going on, besides just feeling uneasy?

It sounds to me like a very deep meditative trance almost. Meditation is sort of a spectrum, more than a single thing. You can take it a lot of different places. The question, as far as shamanism is concerned, is how useful it is - in some ways, with meditation you're exploring your consciousness. It's a bit like exploring more of a dream state, would be my interpretation, but without shifting into dreaming so much.

Ali, Some thoughts: Like you said, it's probably a conflict. Conflicts come from intent or emotional energy, usually. In particular, we tend to ignore our dreaming side, which lacks a lot of the thinking framework of our everyday mind. To understand that dreaming energy, the subconscious, to have to approach it in the same way it works - whether through dreaming or through not using your normal thinking process. In dealing with those kinds of conflicts, I've often found it helpful to approach it indirectly. To push and prod at it directly, it's too close to me emotionally. I get no insight or clarity about it. If I instead look at it in terms of consequences and direction, it makes more sense. Kind of like in a stream where rocks are obstructing the flow of the water, I can't always look directly for the rocks, but I can look for how the water is disturbed. In terms of emotional energy, you can start by looking at where you have trouble moving. Try to understand what part of things are affected, what can you "do" or "not do", as far as this part of you that is in conflict with you is concerned. Try to not care about whether it's right or wrong or how it affects you. Just look at what's going on. It might kick up some dreaming things that will provide more information, or things that slip around during the day, almost unnoticeable. When you have started to draw the boundaries, then you can look at it more directly and really figure out the "why" and how to change it. Good luck! -karl

What else was going on when that transfer happened?

I'd suggest exploring things more, see why those are popping up. Sometimes, we get distracted by the "what" when the "why" is more important (though also more difficult to figure out). Also, the unexpected can happen for a reason - it can be very valuable to jolt us out out of our expected results in something and force us to reevaluate our premises. -karl

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Not particularly. Think of energy as lego pieces. Humans more or less have the same lego pieces, whether male or female. There are some sex/gender differences between those lego pieces themselves, but mostly they are the same. Those lego pieces can be put together in different ways, arranged or configured. I think of this as a 'position'. It's the arrangement of how the energy is put together or flows together which makes most of us how we think of 'us'. That is because the most important factor in self-identity is the how the emotional lego pieces are arranged. Most of gender identity comes from this particular arrangements, which is based on society. That being said, there are some differences, so it's not all exactly the same - just mostly. In our society, we generally either emphasize differences far too much, or completely ignore them, which are both kind of inaccurate. If you look at people, you can see "oh that seems to be very masculine", meaning, it has a configuration which is more typical of men or boys, but that's how it's put together. Energy itself doesn't have a gender or sex, and especially not all energy has male/female.

I'm impressed you can kind of understand (as a native English speaker) up to the middle english period, roughly.

I have some feathers, too - good shamanic tools.

Well, say it's a loving intent - who says it has to be a human concept of love?

There's an open question whether whatever drives the universe is blind or not-blind, though both are at a scale where 'plan for me, specifically' is much too small to be a concern. I think you can believe either way. You run into problems where you remove your own power in making choices, or distort the choice as visible to you into something it's not. Often things like karma or "the universal plan" or "fate" in conversations are really removing your own ability to look at things clearly, or decide things going forward. Having said that, sometimes things are set up or proceeding in a way where it feels very similar to there's a path laid out for you. There is energy and intent at work out there, which while not the universe choosing things for you, can seem like something which is just happening to you. It's difficult to separate all the things into what's really going on. One reason why looking at things purely in terms of intent is so helpful. For example, my own journey to shamanism, I don't think the universe set out a path for me to find it, or that I was meant to do it, or that it was part of some plan, or fate. But looking at my own energy, the way I personally was created in the world and my energy moved in it, I was probably inevitably going to find myself at the crossroads of shamanism, in one form or another. In years gone by, some people might have talked about it being chosen, or the path choosing me. I can understand that viewpoint, but in my view, a more nuanced look at it really puts the intent to find the path squarely on my own energy. If people saw it another way, I won't say they're wrong, because it is another way to see things. You have to find the ways for yourself on how you see things that work for you.

I think in that viewpoint, you are always dealing with the implication that there's "something" out there which is guiding us, some outside meaning to things. If you are bad in some karmic sense, then why does that matter? What out there cares? If it's ourselves, what part of ourselves cares, exactly? Often it's paired with what is called our "higher selves", some part we can't access but are supposed to, or sometimes, some sort of god or higher being. What is "good" from that viewpoint? What is "bad"? What decides which is which? What is the point of 'lessons'? Usually it's something the person in question doesn't really know, it's whatever you (or somebody else) wants it to be. In the Maker cosmology, the answer is that there's no point, there's no "lessons" - or you could say there is a point, but the point is too big to mean much as a person. Everything in the universe is helping the universe learn about itself, like learning a dance by dancing. We're just (very) small pieces of that dance, small dancers on the stage. Almost so small we're irrelevant, but not quite. We do matter, in a very, very tiny way. There's no lessons in any sense from a universal point of view, but individually, there are a lot of things to evaluate and learn. How we choose to do things impacts our life, there are consequences to doing things one way or another. Whether we are ignorant of those or not, actions create results. Over time, those lessons influence our energy, and they still remain when our energy returns - but not in any karmic sense.

In the Makers view, human energy does come back, but in fragments. So, no total reincarnation, but bits of all of us have been here before. That's separate from the view of karma, which doesn't exist in the Makers cosmology as such. The parts of us that have been here before, they are imprinted a bit with their history, and therefore some patterns can repeat. However, there's no point to the patterns or debt that has to be paid off. They are simply patterns which because they have happened before can influence us again. The effect is small compared to our personal history in this life, but in specific cases it can be very significant. The energies from our past have importance to the shamanic view because we are born with them - they are part of us "originally", as we were formed into this world, which is different than things we accumulated since that point at our personal beginning.

It can be viewed that way, as a more gentle and self-directed version. During soul retrieval, normally, the shaman has to be the one guiding the (inaccessible to the healee) energy back. In recap, you're taking back your own by yourself.

We're trying to upgrade the forums to newer software. We ran into some issues, and in trying to resolve them the forum had to stay offline. We ended up backing out the upgrade for now, so it's back to how it was. When the issues get addressed (hopefully) soon, then we'll try it again with better results! -karl

I've seen this before with particularly sharp negative emotional energy - abuse, depression, that sort of thing - like a residue. (Or worse) Are smells something you typically perceive when doing this sort of work?

If anything, you might want to look around the rest of the day, especially a bit before and after, see if things seemed different in some fashion?

You're welcome! Being empathic is tough, but much of that is we make it tough. We humans don't do a very good job of handling emotional energy, whether ours or others. It's a tough thing to learn, but very valuable and practical. For the empathy, specifically, learning to separate out what is ours and what is not ours is the key, but a long journey to that point. A good starting point is to see it not as a super gift nor a dead weight in our lives, but something which is just how we're put together. Then we can learn to work with it as part of us. Empathy as an energy and the reality of living with it is a topic which a lot of people write about, and a lot of people don't help much with - despite all the writing about it. Practical advice is important.

Sometimes you need to try something different. Different people respond to different things.

As long as you liberally sprinkle in curse words, you'll sound authentic

you sound great in english -karl