Michelle

Mahkeis, I am new to the Maker tradition, but not new to energy work itself. I have a lot of previous experience before coming here and have found I am always respected for who I am. Even with my own personal experiences, I am still learning new things here, which I am finding complement and add to what I previously knew. All I can suggest is, start off with just the recap 1 class and see how it goes. If you find any of the information classes with what you previously were taught, maybe put aside what you already know, just to see what this can teach you and then find a way to integrate it with what you already know and practice?

Hi Fini, welcome I'm also in QLD. Originally from Melbourne, I travelled all over Au and I had a similar connection feel in and around Alice. I am also exploring and healing from childhood traumas that one counsellor told me was PTSD. I'm currently doing a couple of classes here and I highly, highly recommend the recap 1 class when it starts again. Definitely do the exercise as outlined here. It's how it's done in the recap class, but they talk about different areas of your life and how to focus on those specifically. The energy won't hang around you. Expelling it is an act of intent for it to be gone. It will then go back to wherever energy comes from, to the either, the void, to the person it rightfully belongs to - but it won't stay with you

I've started to work on sharpening focus and I'm having an interesting experience. I pick a spot on the wall and just put all my attention on that. Like meditation, except I am not trying to relax my mind, alter perception or meditate as such, I am more looking at intensifying my focussing abilities. If that makes sense? So I picked the spot on the wall and just focused my mind on it, eyes closed. As I continued to keep my attention fully on this spot, my mind started to throw up all kinds of chatter. It just would not shut up. When that wasn't working, I felt my body shift as though energy was shifting around me and I'd some how gone into an alternate state of perception. My thoughts went to that for a while, until i realised it was just another mind trick, to get me focused on my mind again. I'm not looking to stop my mind, I don't think that's possible, but to be able to maintain my focus no matter what my mind throws at me - or later on, what may come up while I'm doing specific energy work. I know there's a class here that looks at the mind and I'm interested to take it later on, I just feel this is going to take years lol.

Besides the eagles were hungry and vying for food? Not everything has to have a meaning. as Freud said, 'sometimes a cigar is just a cigar'. The important thing is, did you get a feeling at the time there was some important message in this? If you did, what do YOU think it was? If it's a message for you, then you are the best person to work it out. Ask your intuition what each part might mean and trust in your own responses. Then look at your life experiences over the following days to see if it helps make sense of the message.

Narael, I don't know how I shut it down, it was really a response to living in a very toxic environment and not being able to take it anymore. It was my family home when growing up, so I wasn't able to run away from the world. I think it is part of a survival instinct we have and takes a lot of emotional trauma to happen. Trust me, you don't want to shut it down. It's a part of who you are, it's a natural ability you were born with and I believe such things happen because it's part of the overall reason of why we are here. Being an empath is awesome for giving you early warning when danger's about. It can help to keep you safe. If you find later on you are drawn to healing work, it is crucial for helping you know what is wrong or what the cause might be, without them needing to go into it. Ideally, the best way forward I find is to embrace who you are and learn to shield so you can still sense what's going on but don't have to take it in and have it be a part of you. Like being at a party and watching a conversation take place on the other side of the room, instead of feeling you are part of it. I'm doing the recap 1 class now that Ralph mentioned. I'd highly recommend it as a place to start. It teaches you to know what is your energy and what has been taken in from others - and how to get rid of energy that isn't yours. It seems a simply exercise, but it does work. Part of shielding is also being really grounded in knowing who you are as a person and having strong boundaries about what is acceptable and not acceptable behaviour toward you. It's crucial to get to know yourself well and to know how you feel inside. That way when you start to feel strange, you can tune into your body to find out if this is you responding to a situation you've picked up on but aren't aware of yet, or if it's an energy from someone else you've picked up on. Once you know these, you can create an energetic boundary in your auric field, which is essentially what a shield is. And also, learn how to shake off energy at the end of the day. Cleaning yourself energetically is vital. I don't know if any of this is taught here, but I think it might be. I do strongly suggest recap 1 as a place to start though.

I shut down my empathic side for years because I couldn't cope with what I was picking up. It caused so much trouble for me, doing that. It was part of my denial. I'm now in the process of opening that up again and learning to handle it better. Narael, have you learnt how to shield? To create a personal shield around you, to keep the energies out, so you can read what's happening, but not be consumed by it?

Hi Narael, Welcome home! I've had similar experiences, though not quite the same. I suffered a lot from low self esteem, so I was always mentally bashing myself for being 'different'. Why couldn't I be normal? Why did I have to be the one who saw things so differently? So deeply? It was a really long journey for me, but I came to see it as my strength. Being different can mean you are odd, strange, less than the heard. Or it can mean you are unique, a rare gift and have strengths and abilities most don't, which can set you apart. I chose to take being called weird as a compliment. What I find now is I am finding more enlightened people around me. I am choosing to walk my path, which is not like anyone else's and it shouldn't be. I am choosing to honour me, whatever that will be. I choose to like me, my uniqueness, my individuality. I choose to just like me . I'm finding people are more accepting now too. Partly it's because times do seem to be changing and more people are becoming more aware and partly it's because I'm getting older and hanging out with older people more, even online. The drum in my pick is one I made myself. I went to a shamanic drum workshop. My drum's name is George. Most people go for what they feel are more spiritual names or more 'traditional' names. Not me. That's part of my uniqueness

Thank you Sandstorm I've been doing that more and more since my first post and indeed you are right. Good things are coming.

sandstorm, being a shaman is about learning to read the energy patterns underneath things. What you are talking about here is something humans have constructed (calendar and clock to artificially control time and superstition to explain fears). Shamans don't look at the superstition, they look at the energy that might be underneath. If you have enough people in one place, believe in the same thing, then their combined energy can create an energetic pattern we perceive as karma or fate. That doesn't mean it is real and doesn't mean it is made up, just that it is not something naturally created in nature, but does exist now in an energy form. And because it has been collectively created by humans, each human can be affected by it if they buy into the belief or they can choose not to be affected by it. Now at this point, you could say 'but my whole life has proved it is true' and to that I would say, that is so because your whole life you just took on the belief it was true. When we tend to believe something strongly enough, we find it often happens that way, because of the amount of energy we put into believing it. Now you are being confronted with a possible new belief. You can choose to accept what everyone has told you or you can choose not to accept. And before you make your decision ask yourself this, why is it in countries that do not have this belief, that the females born in 1966 have been fine? Some have had crap lives, some have had OK lives and some have had awesome lives. For a belief like this to be True it would have to be universally true and this one is not. My personal belief - I do not speak for any other shamans here - is that time does not exist. Humans created what a way to artificially mark moments in the day so they could plan ahead and control their lives. It makes getting about in the physical world a lot easier. It means you know when you are expected to be at a place and the person you are meeting will also be there. However, this to me is all artificial. The truth is there is no time, but there are cycles and we do see change. When you connect with the non physical or spiritual realms that's where you realise how artificial 'time' is. We look for energy patterns to see what has been, what is and what is coming. We look for changes in energy patterns to see if something is out of balance and also to help us redress that balance. I would like to ask you a question. When you say "But isn't being a shaman the ability to consider everything. With an open mind." What are you really asking? Being a shaman isn't about considering every human belief with an open mind, because human beliefs often come out of their own minds based on their fears or doubts. Shamans are often curious and question everything with an open mind, but that isn't considering. I guess the real question here is how much do you need or want to cling to this belief that you are somehow cursed because of an arbitrary date? How much has that belief shaped your life, simply because you did believe it then set up expectations based on it? What would your life be like now if you have of been told it was an extremely fortunate year to be born in? Just to list a few firehorse women: Louisa May Allcott, Ella Fitzgerald, Aretha Franklin, Sandra Day O'Connor, Barbara Streisand, Cindy Crawford Cynthia Nixon, Oprah Winfrey, Emma Watson, Katie Holmes, Kristen Stewart.

Hi Sofia, The time zone was a tricky one for me. Basically, if you compare time with New York, you'll be in the correct time zone. Also, watch out for daylight savings. Intent is a bit complicated. Perhaps look up 'intend'. One description of intent is to have the mind or will focused and fixed on a desired outcome. Think about when you say you are going to do something but don't really mean it and when you say you are going to do it and then set about doing it. the difference in feeling between the two is your intent. In the second situation, you tapped into an energy within you which is your intent. When someone does something and we don't understand why, we usually ask 'but what was the intent?' What was the think they meant to have happen. Or intention. That's generally about the meaning of the word. What I'm learning here is there is an energy underneath that, that I can tap into and that energy is what is looked at. I think it makes more sense if the class is being done Sorry if that doesn't help.

Hi Sweet Soul, It's very much about doing here The classes give you some background info and theory and then an exercise is set for you to do during the week. The class itself is in a chat programme, so is basically words on the screen and you can ask questions. If you'd done private messages in facebook, that's sort of what it's like. And there are always the forums to come to for more questions, answers and conversations

A couple of things. 1. Trying. Don't try. Trying sets up an expectation that something must happen and then a fear of failure creeps in and you end up sabotaging it before you begin. Go with the "lets see what happens" attitude and then just allow whatever. If something happens great, if nothing happens also great. Very much a case of 'trying too hard'. 2. Not everyone experiences through sight. We have 6 main senses, 5 are the physical ones. Some people hear things, some taste them and some get physical sensations of what is happening. All are valid. None are more special or better than any other. As with everything, journeying is about you and your experience. You need to build up a strong sense of faith in how it works for you, trust me, even if 100 people all have sight as the main way to experience a journey, there will be 100 different ways it is done. For me, I often hear or feel things then my mind fills in vision for me, but vision isn't necessarily my strongest sense when it comes to anything not physical world. Set yourself a time to explore and allow the spirits or the experience or guides (whatever term feels best) to take the lead. Allow it to unfold for you and see what happens, don't try to control it at all. You may experience nothing and then later on thoughts and feelings come to you. It may be you have a feeling for a fraction of a second but ignore it. Take note and allow things to come and go at their own direction. Keep a journal and look back after a month or so and see what happens.

I was recently reading about animal symbolism. Bat is the symbol of rebirth and transposing things to severe connection from the old to take up the new. The link was made to how babies develop head up in the womb, then turn upside down to prepare for birth, turning their back on the non physical realm to prepare to enter the physical one, so to speak. I didn't do this. Doctors turned me in the womb so I would be head down twice and I turned back three times. I never 'severed' my connection with the non physical or the spiritual realm as it's also called. I came into this world with that connection still strong and I've been like that my whole life. As a child I would be criticised for my "too grown up" understanding of things. I could easily see and understand things no-one else could and it never bothered me, but I did learn to shut it down in order to live more easily in society. It came with a cost though. At least now I can choose to reconnect or not and on my own terms.

Part of my struggle for so long was believing it was better to be traditionally trained by a "real" shaman. Where I was going to find one living in the middle of the city in Melbourne, Australia I had no idea. Eventually, I came to the point where I had to go alone and just cope with it. As I stumbled along, I found most of my doubt and worry was based on fear of being judged by others as not being good enough, not being worthy. Just prior to starting here I decided I would decide what was worthy or not in me and that if I said it was good enough, then it was. Doing classes here has helped me feel more certain and grounded in that belief, as I reclaim my own energy.

Just an update: Now in week 3 of classes and I have to say I am soooo glad I did this. I have seen things begin to shift and change already, as I put the time into doing what I'm learning. This is an investment in *me*. One I am extremely glad I made.