Harbinger:  Someone wrote to me a little while ago commending the practice of offering Shamanic Shift Center consultations and sessions on a donation basis.  Weirdly, that same day the signs of a message urging big shifts in our longstanding purposeful money-practices began appearing.

First sign:  To fund Shamanic Shift Center I am doing some property management jobs as an independent contractor for a local property management company.  Some new tenants - jovial young men and self-described yuppies - got wind of this shamanic practice and attempted to get a shamanic performance for free for their own and their friends' amusement at their next weekend party by 'pulling my leg' about a haunting in their new abode. 

When I shamanic-journeyed on this, I was tipped off by Spirit and Spirits that these funny business guys assumed I was gullable, and this was a sympton of a mild sort of dis-empowering disrespect that had grown out of their interpretation of Shamanic Shift Center's published 'donation basis' or 'energy-exchange' or 'love-offering' policy around shamanizing. 

These young men are in business with a gusto to achieve ambitious goals and they could hardly help concluding that I must not really be in business here, that this Shamanic Shift Center - Companions Circle is only a pretend gig.  Well pretending is an effective shamanic technique and we do call the life-source-force FUN, but this here is a real business, albeit a non-profit one.

Next signs:  Then came a series of contacts by earlier inquirers or visitors who had phoned or arrived here for shamanic assistance before, stating up front their various situational inabilities to donate any money for sessions.  In each of these cases the process had side-tracked somehow - from cancelled or missed appointments, unfulfilled energy-exchange agreements, half-hearted participation, seemingly relentless self-defeating actions, and apparent (attempted) crazy-making.  I noticed those old familiar patterns starting up and begining to cycle in each of these out-of-the-blue renewed requests for more shamanic assistance. 

Juxtaposed alongside came a series new contacts flowing new energy,  who clearly took as a given donating an amount of money comparable to a massage-therapy session's cost.  These new visitors are clearly shfiting their lives according to their stated goals as their shamanic processes unfold.  After shamanic dream-venting for a few days I shamanic-journeyed again on these old and new connections and was taken by Spirit and Spirits to a place of a bright red X and two green arrows along a lighted tree-lined road.   

"Shut down one lane and open two new ones!" I was urged, by Spirit and Spirits.  "The other way was the best for a long while, but no longer - shift now!"  Now I am changing all those shamanic consultations or sessions 'offered on a donation-basis' statements on websites, announcements, and business cards.  I am leaving open several donation opportunities that are obviously separate from the booking of shamanic sessions and consultations.  

And...As gently and kindly as possible I am terminating (and redirecting onward with many blessings) those earlier customers.  I take some deep blessing (leading up to laughing) breaths whenever I consider how I may receive unhappy or even disparaging and debunking comments and/or low ratings somewhere over these recent changes and actions.  I ask for and accept ongoing gifting and guiding from Spirit and Spirit for facing cheerfully any challenging counter-reactions to this radical shift to new ways of going about shamanic-ways business!

Update - Clarification - Elaboration:  A key feature of Shamanic Shift Center's non-profit mission is keeping a shamanic practice active and shamanic practitioner(s) available in our community.  So requesting payments or donations for shamanic assistance to offset costs or improve our shamanic outreach is 'related business income' for Companions Circle Church, a non-profit corporation. 

For shamanic consultations or sessions one can pay the suggested amount(s) or donate another amount.  The form of matter-energy to pay or donate for shamanic assistance is money in US Dollars.  If anyone wishes to offer some other form of energy or matter in addition to the suggested payment or a donation of money, OK.   

Funeral officiating and the Roadscrossing project's supportive counseling and related services for our uninsured and lower-income neighbors are still offered on an "affordable donation' basis.  

The most amazing shamans might not even be seeking illumination or enlightenment or any kind of righteousness!  There is a popular train of thought which links shamans and shamanizing to enlightenment seeking and realizing.  Would not a shaman likely be among the most integrated and balanced of individuals? 

I understand that there must be a really wide variety of shamans and shamanizers, so many powerful shamans might indeed be balanced, integrated, or enlightened to the max.  But I now ride a different train of throught, a less popular train I realize, and journey to seek out original shamans who live on the outskirts or perpetually travel, as ECSTATIC characters, even wild, weird, possibly unbalanced characters, who might be considered slightly frightening, possibly even frightful 'fringe characters' who thrill to use unbalance, chaos, dis-integration, and even monstrosity to full re-co-creative advantage. 

These foolish, crazy, or trickster types of shamans or shamanizers do recognize and participate in Beauty - of the more unconventional kinds, usually - and do know how to balance expertly, even if they find falling and bounding back more fun.  They may seem rude or riled or roiled upon occasion, or given to seeminly inexcusable excesses or gross mannerisms, or even appear unapproachable to those who fit better into society's norms.  (Every one of these stranger shamans is a true singularity - as all real shamans must be - so it is genuinely silly for me to write these approximate generalizations I am having so much fun with here.)

These days as a shaman-fool I seek out the wilder stunt performing shamans and daredevil shamanizers who might be lurking in plain sight, nearby or far away, within the shadowy or garish lighting effects of the ordinary.  Full-blown shamanic 'liberation' of the untamed kind may be right for only a very few earth voyagers, a diverse oddball bunch or circus band who do not even consider seeking liberation from universal life-recycling or finding more than a few days of rest anywhere, who revel through their wheeling reeling risky incarnations as just more shapeshifting practice, mainly for the FUN of it.  Along their ways these weirder shamans also gladly or grudgingly assist companion travelers - and settlers - with purposeful beneficial projects, on a case-by-case basis, also for the FUN of it.

Shamanic FUN:  The movie Ratatouille is full of the ingredients for shamanic innovation.  Here are just a few of the basic level shamanic lessons I noticed:

• Ecstatic imagining shifts reality:  Imagining can change you and your realtiy, which changes all reality by just that much, which can bring amazing shifts.  Gusteau's 'spirit' as an imaginary chef is a powerful teacher and guide, even though he is also 'just a figment' of the rat Rémy's imagination.  Whatever you can imagine with gusto (or dream up) you can dance to life in ordinary reality.
  
• Unlikely companionships stir up the best shifts:  Awkwardness and mastery co-create the famous restaurant transforming, critic-healing soup through the weird purposeful cooperation of rat and human as chef and cook.  Later, cross-species cooperation that would have been impossible before happens on a wider scale and saves the day.
  
• The remedy for what ails exists in ordinary reality:  Shamanic shifting juxtaposes life's ingredients in new, transforming ways, even in simple situations such as serviings of soup.  The skinny embittered food critic re-connects with his lost childhood self and happiness and becomes a whole man through the soul-healing smells and tastes he experiences within the first spoonful of this story's ordinary yet extraordinary ratatouille.  Vital re-connections and interconnections in the soup(s) of LIFE are re-activated and come alive through shamanic tweaking amidst everyday situations.
  

I have used Ratatouille in shamanic teaching since I was entertained by watching.  There are many more, more subtle shamanic lessons in this movie. I find that most movies teach shamanic shifting if I watch with shamanic attention and let the entertainment entrain me.

Wow!  A lot of swinging and swaying, shifting and bending, flying and falling happens on and around the universalTree(s) of Life.  This forest garden of Earth is jumping and bursting  with adventures and challenges.  Getting hung up on anything hurts!

Shamanizers, be on the lookout for unusual opportunities and powerful friends around every bend.  Get used to changing plans and taking alternative paths. 

Practice nearby viewing and seeing challengers in many new lights.  Gow expert at shifting paradigms and perspectives. 

Give up on saving yourselves through enlighenment.  If we can't or won't shamanize right around us in ordinary reality our non-ordinary potentials and possibilities will be limited accordingly.

...yet the ordinary is always wonderful and extraordinary!  And the non-ordinary is built, woven, and spun of dreaming and imagining from beginning to ending. 

And...in and through and as those non-ordinary realms, orders, and modes of Spirit and Spirits, of Soul and Souls, a shaman becomes able to re-connect any mundane moment to Mystery-Source...and grasp on purpose choice bits of all potential and all possibility.  This happens as the inner alchemy of dreaming and imagining, entertained and acted out (even pretended), into our world.

Update inserted:  February 13th, the following paragraph before the last one...

Other ways to say shamanic trinity:  Mystery, Spirit(s), Reality OR Mystery, Dream and Imagination, Performing OR ???!  And shamanc incarnation can be expressed as Non-ordinary becomes ordinary as we shamanize it.

Oops and oh my!  I notice that like most (if not all) of Ourkind I have evolved an enthusiastically insistant yet basically biological need to theologize.  But now I can re-direct this urge and go shamanize instead.

...scarinesses are lurking around the fires and within the waters.  Shamans do not seek enlightenment so much as opportunities to shift reality towards better and best, no matter what.  If a shaman is already perfect, there is nothing approaching out of the gales of any storm crying out for attention...no wounds or dis-eases around to heal...and there would be no storms raging either anywhere in h/er world. 

If a shaman were perfect there would be nothing to shamanize!  And if a shaman is getting any 'business' at all it means s/he in some way(s) has whatever is showing up for healing.  Shamans must have stuff to heal stuff so shamanisms are ways of decending first and last then first all over again.

To focus and flow-energy overwhelmingly towards the best dreams and desires, shamans must face and greet whatever is un-wanted...and acknowledge and make friends with Trickster, the trickster side of nature still traveling with us, always and all ways traveling away from unity.  The shaman searches for the trickster and death and devilish patterns within...and knows s/he will know what to look for by noticing what suffering beings show up on the doorstep of temproary shelter...at the entrance to the cave...and request shamanic assistance.

The trickstering, dualing, separating side of nature is needed for universal re-creation, earthy evolution, and cosmic co-creation - for the 'making of all things new now - but needs to be allowed and guided into healthier happier expressions in the LIFE's universal dreaming and dancing.  After ages of disrespect, denial, and repression, Trickster is resorting to more and more unbalanced, unbalancing extremes to get attention.  Those dances must be celebrated too - before they can be shifted into something better. 

Shaman-fools can befriend the Trickster because the Fool is also adventuring the longest way possible around LIFE.  But a shaman fool may have to give up the capital S and keep falling down to keep dancing with Trickster, an expert at masks, disguises, and shapeshifts.

I write of shamans who have come to realize they are called to be fools...who gave up the capital S  already...who stepped off the spiritual advancement and gifted psychic tracks on purpose...to rattle, drum, sing, and dance on the edges of chaos...for good.  (That link is to a blog post by circle companion and Zaadzter Rezzee who like most of the rest of Companions Circle doesn't get online everyday.)

And as circle companion Chammy often expresses...to keep shamanizing in this world most if not all shamans probably take up foolishness to some degree, no matter what they call it.  Besides, as shamanic jester Shamantic! says...the antics of even the most serious shamans appear foolish to many in this world.  So some of us go ahead and let the world turn us...turn us upside-down and inside-out...and we BE (secretly or notoriously) fools on purpose....which is just another way of saying we live as much shamanic foolishness as possible.

And notice this fun:  Colliding dances birth new stars while nearer to us...circle companion Mars glows brighter again!

Shift keeps happening!  I am working on a winter eNewsletter - since I missed making a November issue.  Since I went intentionally car-less I often find myself missing journeys through deeper Kettle Morraine forests...but I have found several beautiful urban micro-forests a mile or two from here on Milwaukee's east side.  For example, Lake Park is a beautiful wooded bluff overlooking Lake Michigan.  Today I was able to lose sight of the road and breath brisk refreshment for a good while within an almost quiet clearing.

However it was on my way back out of the woods that I glanced up just at the right moment to greet an owl soaring over me.  What an encouraging inspiring blessing that silent sight was for me!

Newest news about ongoing shamanic classes:  From now on, anyone interested in ongoing  shamanic classes at Shamanic Shift Center is hereby asked to contact me (Elizabeth) and open an email conversation leading to a phone or in-person interview and then planning how it can happen.  So the Friday 5PM shamanic classes are on hold until I can gather two or three or more who want to participate in ongoing shamanic self-education with Spirit and Spirits.  The spacetime coordinates may be different whenever classes begin again too. 

Anyway, in the meanwhile participating in the 7PM Friday night Shamanic Shift Center circle and/or the Thursday night ('Green Rock Club') discussion (details here) is still the best way to receive and share shamanic teachings.  Shamanic ways begin, continue, and end, then begin again in the circling around of two or three or more who agree to gather at the crossroads of here and now!

The photo is another I took on the Drakes Beach side of Pt. Reyes National Seashore, a favorite power-place for shamanic journeying and dreaming.

Journeying in my dreams with my teachers last night I was encouraged to hear (again) that a key mission of Shamanic Shift Center and ASQ University is living and showing funner remedies for serious imbalances of places, events, and situations of ecological and community wounding.  I learned that 'seriousness' is a symptom of an imbalance of multiple elements and directions and stages at once and will be fatal unless transformed.  FATE+all!

Here I am in Sonoma California continuing my shamanic self-education through Myron Eshowsy's 'WHERE ARE THE DREAMERS?' workshop, part of the Foundation for Shamanic Studies (FSS) Shamanic Innovations series.  Myron is an excellent and entertaining teacher and storyteller.  Perhaps the seriousness of the group is only a temporary side-effect of gathering so many shamanic practitioners into the same spacetime coordinates.

I escaped for a renewing pilgrimage to Pt. Reyes National Seashore, a favorite power-place, located an hour west of Sonoma and an hour north of San Francisco.  I didn't even know my camera could take videos when I shot a clip of South Beach featuring my shadow!  I cannot seem to upload the resulting file to YouTube but if I get that troubleshooted I shall embed it here.

Update - October 30th

I was able to upload an even better .MOV file of Pt. Reyes - South Beach to Shamantic.Org and it can be viewed at...

http://www.shamantic.org/powerplaces.php

...though it takes quite a while to load.  Here are a few more impressions of the shamanic workshop I attended then shifted away from:

I received, receive, and practice through shamanic journeying and dreaming with my circle of Spirit Helpers similar yet different shamanic techniques to those Myron was teaching in the workshop.  This is encouraging, of course. 

The oak trees at the ranch and conference center often hurled acorns and small branches down onto the roof of the meeting room.  Maybe this was 'dry humor' being drummed into us, tempering frustration.

On Monday morning I found myself dismayed and annoyed to be caught by surprise, ambushed by another practitioner's 'You look like you need...' offer of healing.  Yes, here I was relaxing, gazing into the tree-tops while scratching an itch on my back, otherwise un-agendaed, so I didn't notice this hungry do-gooder while evasive countermeasures and diplomatic avoidance were still possible strategies. 

I smiled while I suggested that she go ahead and work within herself on whatever she saw lacking in me and otherwise wait until asked for assistance...and do her best to shift consciousness to focus attention (more and more habitually) first and foremost on what is well and whole.  I long ago noticed that one of my shamanic jesting roles to play is being a handy hanger for the projections of others - only I know who I am so the projections don't stay hung.   I fold them up neatly and hand them back.

A couple dozen 'healers' gather for a workshop and quickly the area's air stagnates, congested with their neediness to give - and to be recognized as powerful, positive, active, 'I know and have what you need' expert intuitive healers.  And here I am just sitting around on vacation...vaguely vacant...entranced and buzzed...savoring the smells, the bird songs, the sights...the golden hills and eucalyptus and bay trees swaying in the blue sky...merely relaxing on some sidelines...presenting a still target.  

As a shamanic fool I often fill with trickster spirits and pop-up a funhouse mirror in the face of unintentionally one-up do-gooding.  My response might be clever or reactive but this is all ok because between moments of shock at the unexpected response arises a moment or two of clarity for (two-way) deeper recognizing and respecting of the essential wholeness and oneness of healer and healee in any situation.  It is a banner day when I go with the flow mostly, without much reacting.  And whoever this person is, they do transform me, just not in the way they expected.  The other person in any encounter where something 'gets me' is really my main teacher of the day.
   
Oh well...this little surprise spine-bristle and feather-ruffle started me dreaming up a funner notion - a shamanic teaching doll shaped like me and named after me (like the ResussiAnnie dolls for CPR training) for shamanic workshop leaders to use for instructional purposes and for shamanic students to practice on.  There would be little doorways at energy centers with itty-bitty plastic power animals and soul parts to escape and be retrieved...and roll-out strings for attatchments to be cut...and open-up cavities with mini-monsters representing intrusions to be extracted...and more, much more.    

When I attend a workshop mainly it is to shamanize in a larger circle with other folks than usual, not to copy down or even jot notes on shamanic rituals presented by a shaman expert.  For me the methods and techniques presented are just good examples to experience in the moment within a healing, transforming circle that is open  for business - the teaching comes through the experiencing.  

From attending shamanic workshops over the years I am understanding and accepting more that there are only a few of us who are not looking or asking for an infusion or transfering of a magical or mystical  'something else' from a known or renoun expert shaman.  Until I can be less prickly and impatient amidst a crowd I will refrain from signing up for more shamanic workshops.

Also, for a while, I will be practicing even more restraint than I have been in teaching shamanic ways myself.  All the more do I intend to offer an alternative school of shamanic ways and innovations.

Alternative:  less seriousity...more FUN... less literalism...more originality...less idealizing of indigenous peoples...and way more scientific, philosophic, artistic, and historical literacy...and as little as possible pop-newageiness, pop-esoterisism, pop-occultism, and any kind of supernaturalism or religious dogma...less attention to governments and religious organizations as solution generators...more unity and interconnective consciousness (famous folks are never the ones in charge of what is ailing the community, country, and world)...to be continued.

Myron kept recommending that everyone journey to their own Spirit Helpers and receive original rituals for each situation - but still, before and after and during every shamanic activity during the workshop many pens flew over the pages, recording every minute detail uttered by the teacher.  Then hands were raised and serious examples of terminal uniqueness expressed as 'But what if...?' and 'Yes but what if...?' or 'What if my ___ is ___?' and Myron's answer would always be 'Well that is ok...that is one of the things that can happen...' and/or 'You would just have to journey on that!'

ASQ University:  Already I have received a few comments that Friday afternoons from 5 to 7PM (Central-Whichever) is an inconvenient day of the week and period of the day to hold shamanic classes.  I am offering this ongoing, open, open-ended shamanic education (= spirit and self-education) to anyone who is finding self being nudged in any way towards any kind of contemporary shamanics.  This can mean attending a class every so often or coming regularly for a flexible and local yet deep apprenticeship or mentoring experience at a fraction of the cost charged by the FSS and many other shamanic organizations (not counting the travel and lodging expenses). 

Friday afternoon before the 7PM Shamanic Circle seems more convenient to me than the only other period I currently have available which is after the circle closes.  I could switch.   Still, studying and taking up and keeping up shamanic ways requires major life-shifting.  Yet these days most periods and days might be said to be inconvenient.

Update - October 30th...Shamanic classes are on hold for a while for reorganizing.  Please see later blog posts or click to here for more details.

Convenience and inconvenience....I have nothing against the more convenient distance learning through multimedia connections or the most inconvenient learning in the wilderness on an opposite side of the planet.  Our shamanic seminary/university gives credit for both - and credit for any related studies (compementary medicines, earth-centered or indigenous religions and traditions, and much more) when these have been merged into a student's individualized shamanic practice.  I don't think the costs and tuitions charged for other shamanic educational materials and programs (I have looked into) are unreasonable or wrong at all.  

For worse and for better (and ultimately all for the best) there is a lot of shopping around going on and a lot of dipping in and dropping out these days.  Not everyone is called to practice shamanic ways as such and I do trust  that the right individuals have been, are, and will be blown towards Shamanic Shift Center - Companions Circle (and our projects) by Spirit(s) and always vibrate into our circle(s) according to resonance.

Aloha Salem Quest (ASQ) is another alternative among a growing selection of ways to grok (not just learn about) contemporary shamanic ways - a.k.a. new shamanics for some of us.  When it comes to my own continuing lifelong shamanic education - I have rearranged my whole life drastically and spent small bundles of cash over the years and even now and then traveled way out of my way to receive instruction, but only as I was nudged by Spirit and Spirits.

I shamanize full-time yet do other things shamanizers also can do to raise funds and network:   Officiant and ministerial services of all kinds; non-sectarian spiritual, supportive, advocacy, information and referral, and self-change counseling for a donation or free; more self-employment painting and many property management jobs with another co-founder of our circle; workshops and inservices in diverse community settings; and shamanic sessions by email, phone, or in-person.

Shamanic Shift Center's way of shamanizing includes the basic, intermediate, and advanced methods and techniques taught by FSS and many other schools, each in their own slightly differing ways, and more.  And we feature the Shaman as the ecstatic bridge between the outward playing (wise) Fool's prophetic (from Gk. pro- "before" + root of phanai "to speak") entertainments and the inward working alchemist's sacramental transformations.  The contemporary shaman shamanizes self, community, and world toward the best by being present on purpose anywhere.  She or he acts out and fulfills any calling in any setting within the context of many emerging new ways of being family and community to one another during these exciting and adventuring ages and stages of Being LifeKind. 

There is more to our version of shamanic ways than this.  I will write more about our subtle to garish differences another day.  Naturally some of our separate ways are secrets which are in due course revealed to those who join our school circle and stick and stay. 

The picture is of the back doorway of Shamanic Shift Center and our (mini) outdoor teaching terrace, graced with high noon October sunshine and breezes.  Leaning up against and intertwining the railing is a weird twisted collection of driftwood and sticks.