Greetings Gaia!  Here is a quick update.

As far as shamanic blogging goes I am updating more frequently these days on our circle's blogspot.  But the other blog authors there are in retirement or semi-retirement from blogging or the internet.  So our blogging shamanic shifting mission is up to me.

Those circle companions are supporting Shamanic Shift Center still in many other ways, most importantly through daily prayer-shifting, during 3 to 7 prayer-periods several of circle keep each day.  Add to our prayer-shift list in our candle shrine or add to nShrine's Twitter Shrine (we check it).

The Tortoise Cat blogs here but she's way behind.

My Gaia Pro tips were better than my blog posts here, IMO!  Gaia is still serving but no longer featuring the tips since Gaia Pro is (again) no longer paid or ad-free.  I only wrote a few tips, off the cuff but I did put a considerable amount of heartfelt, spirited thought into them. 

The nagging notion that I needed to write tips really divided my attention from blogging where I was already having trouble keeping updated.  But since the tips were associated with a professional listing I wanted them be examples of my better writing.

 Here are links to those tips and the comments:

The Universe rattles, drums, sings, and dances!

Life is mostly tips - of icebergs floating on seas of Mystery!

So what? No matter what...Simplest word shifts change all now!

Image CredIt:  ImageAfter.Com

Frontier flights and energy-flows back:  The Frontier animal companions shamanic shifted my airline flying experiences again.  From Sacramento to Denver Rudy the Raccoon (A319, N023FR) flew me past occasional wild wind-chimings and mysterious footfalling fallen leaf-crunchings into light looping dream-tours of possible change-scenarios. 

In Denver Trixie (A319, N912FR) the (baby) Red Fox picked me up once again and droned and toned me back to Milwaukee for an early landing.  I felt Frontier's wider circle of animal-linked aircraft energizing airline industry shifts for the better too.

Decided while away:  My and the circle's shamanic bloggings are already the core of the book on new shamanics I kept thinking I was procrastinating over writing.  What remains to be done is editing and commenting what is written and finding the best format for publishing and distributing. 

Also I received more guiding messages and strenghening visions on my 9-day pilgrimage about continuing and intensifying Shamanic Shift Center's shamanic shifting mission(s).  We must keep on questing re-co-creative ways to live and teach new shamanics.  We must continue re-newing non-authoritarian, non-religious, non-institutionalized, science-informed, art and technology marrying contemporary shamanic ways and shamanic innovations within many more individual (and small circle) shamanic shift centers all over, to foster more and more ongoing un-organized yet spirit-coordinated, worldwide, local and global, everyday situation shamanization.

Also I dove into wilder, weirder night dreams than usual while away.  These dream adventures felt like ventiings and re-inventings for the improvement of my health and the healing of related trouble-spots near and far.

Photo Credit:  Jack the Jackrabbit at Denver International Airport by Aykleinman/Wikipedia

Still in Davis, CA:  On Saturdays in Central Park the Davis Farmer's Market is a must.  I intended a walk-through on my way to walking through the University of California - Davis (UCD) Arboretum along Putah Creek.  But I never made it past a street singing performance by the Putah Creed Crawdads, a popular local acoustic band. 

My own acoustic steel-stringed guitar has been packed away in a closet for a while - and is now listed as for sale on Craigslist - but there and then I suddenly dreamed of singing folk music again.  When I requested Wildwood Flower the band obliged even though they hadn't played it in a while and had not brought the lyrics.  As I was thanking them afterwards (and laying down some dollar bills) I heard my voice mentioning that I USED TO play folk guitar and sing every day as well as lead sing-a-longs occasionally. 

Just as it had happened in my momentary dream the Crawdads then insisted that I join them for the next song!  We sang Will The Circle Be Unbroken? and later I rejoined them so a friend of theirs could snap a photo with my camera.  We sang The Battle Hymn of the Republic and another one I had never sung or even heard before.  What fun this was! 

Crustaceans are one of the few animals I am (deathly) allergic to eating so I understood in a shamanic way that this ordinary happening was also a guiding message from Spirit.  I am about to go and delete that Craigslist ad!  Oh, and I now know there is a lot more to Putah Creek than I had realized.

Here I am on a new pilgrimage to Davis, CA for elemental rebalancing and vision re-questing.  This small university city (Google Map) in the Central Valley where I grew up through my first childhood still relaxes and restores me at once.  It is hot and dry through Summer and my favorite weather happens during Fall as the breezes pick up and the temperature lowers just a little.  It looks like a perfectly ordinary place yet it is a paradise for walkers, bicycle-riders, and autodidacts.

I flew here in Frontier Airlines A319s upon spokesanimal energy-flows of air and metal, Trickster and Wisdom, and much more - with Trixie the Red Fox (N912FR) from Milwaukee to Denver and Doc the Snowy Owl (N017FR) from Denver to Sacramento.  Both aircraft are powered by two General Electric (GE) CFM 56-5B5 wing-mounted engines yet I experienced each plane flying with a distinct style.

Trixie took off and rose up humming resonant didgeridoo-ing and bag-piping thrummings mostly in the deepest and highest ranges that flew me into a trance and shifted us to Denver in what seemed like no-time.  Doc;s flight felt less dance-like and more serene, and instead of wild thrilling drones I heard women's voices chanting and lulling softly yet vibrantly and intensely yet smoothly in mostly the middle ranges.

My whole self began recycling and initiating another AQAL-ity fresh start as soon as my feet touched the ground here!

P.S.  The photo is from the Wikipedia.  (Wow, there is a Davis Wiki too!)

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.