Category: English 2013

I was reflecting on what in the practice of shamanism is called “The Shaman’s Death”. I know many of you reading The Transmutation News do not practice shamanism. But this type of initiatory death does appear in all spiritual traditions.

There are no exercises that one can lead in any type of workshop that provides a true “shamanic death”. Life brings this initiation to us. We might experience a “spiritual death” spontaneously in a meditation, journey, or dream. But you cannot plan for such an initiation as it comes in its own timing. This true initiation has no safety net. In such an initiation we lose the identity we are attached to on an egoic and personality level. The recreation and rebirth come as we learn to journey within and find our inner voice and authentic self.

Life circumstances that provide such a death experience are typically very harsh as the turbulence of life helps to reshape us and sculpt us into our true nature and strips away anything that is inauthentic and no longer serves us. In the end as we surrender to our new identity, we emerge reborn and refreshed.

I am bringing this up now as I feel that so many of you have been experiencing this type of death/rebirth. Life circumstances are creating shifts and changes within that lead us to the place of evolution we talk about and many write about. But again, this evolutionary experience is never pre-planned by our rational mind. Our soul creates this at just the right time.

I feel that the power of shamanism in the 21st Century is about journeying to our Inner World. We have been journeying within over the last years as we have been doing practices that cultivate a rich inner garden. We live on planet earth, which is a garden. And inside of us is a garden that needs to be cared for and cultivated. We are caretakers of our earth garden within and without.

The practices that I share in my books Medicine for the Earth, How to Heal Toxic Thoughts, and How to Thrive in Changing Times are filled with practices and meditations that help us to plant strong and healthy seeds. These practices and meditations also assist in removing plants that have grown deep roots that no longer serve our health and wellbeing.

I have shared all the practices I wrote about in my books on this monthly column in order to assist all of us in our global community who have been reading the Transmutation News. I have made the information available to everyone.

All of the practices I have shared over the years create a beautiful inner garden that led us to a place of understanding that “I am enough”. When you evolve into this place you are no longer thrown off center by all that happens around you. For you can now move through life from a place of being centered and from a stance of grace.

The New Year ushers in a feeling that we can “begin again”. Of course, we cannot go back and change the past. But we can spiral back to a place of deepening the practices that we have been doing that lead us to a richer and healthier inner environment.

Many of us feel we have new opportunities as we move into a new cycle. And we do. Every shift in season provides new opportunities for growth.

I suggest that as we look at beginning the year with new eyes and a desire to experience a richer and healthier life that we revisit our inner garden we have been cultivating.

Put on some nice relaxing music and travel into your Inner World with the intention of examining the soil in your garden. Don’t worry about the seeds and plants in your garden. Just examine your soil. Notice the texture, the depth of your soil, the level of moisture. Does your soil seem rich and fertile? Does it seem dry and uncared for?

Allow your own inner knowing to provide you with the instructions of what is needed to make sure the soil of your inner garden is rich, healthy, and fertile.

For your spiritual practices to take root you must have a healthy base of soil for any new seeds of knowledge, inspiration, creative spark to take root in and grow in.