silenceseeker

I'm sorry for your loss, Nick. Your tribute to her and how she was interwoven into your life is beautiful. I think you also illustrated how the detachment we talk about as Makers doesn't mean, ' not feeling,' I think because we are more detached from the world, we tend to feel emotions with incredible purity and strength, like a child does before they learn how to shut the world out. I think placing her in view of the bird bath was a nice touch. And I think you made the right choice for her to go at that time, to keep her going would have been for you, not for her. And I think being with your pet, in those last moments, giving them comfort, letting them know they are loved is the best you can possibly do in those last moments here- think of her cat energy, returning to the pool, feeling that love and how that love that she brings in with her will enrich that pool for the new kitties coming into our world. Lorrie

I think the posting images thing is fixed now! Thanks! Lorrie

Maybe try it now? I went in to the Recap 3 forum and made a test post and it seems okay. There were 0 posts there so I'm not sure if that was the issue or not.

HI DB, I've sent you a private message, if you want to discuss what's on your mind. Welcome, Lorrie

I should clarify, I don't mean only writing with a pen and paper works, typing with a keyboard on a document works too, there's probably still a difference between how the information gets processed but I think they are both useful for retaining insights and knowledge. Lorrie

This is not meant to be sarcastic or anything but have you tried writing down what you learn or experience, like keep a diary? I found that physically writing, the act of putting a pen to paper seems to really help with cementing thoughts in my memory. Maybe you could keep a diary for these kinds of thoughts? On a related note, one of the reasons I feel posting experiences to the forums is important is related to this phenomenon. When I was taking classes, I made myself post every week about my experience with the current exercise. If I didn't, I found that it sort of slipped back in memory. I think our minds are always trying to discount the types of experiences we focus on in shamanism. When you sit down and make yourself articulate your experiences, it not only makes them more integrated in your energy and memory but I also found that things that I had forgotten about or didn't notice about what I was writing about would pop up and so it usually became a much deeper experience for me. I'm not sure exactly why other than you are making yourself review and analyze things that are very fleeting and hard to put into words, making the attempt to describe things beyond the reach of words somehow makes it at least more clear and even more solid. Lorrie

Good observation, it's sometimes helpful to think of the exercises like a koan where it delivers you to a space or non-place that will teach you something and expand your energy. And to reinforce what Eman wrote, the class exercises are both intended to give you a taste/sample of what can be done and you would be wise to continue practicing and expanding on your own (each exercise can really become it's own thing if you work with them enough) but they are also given in a way to overwhelm you slightly because that gets you out of your comfort zone and then your energy has the space to move. We generally recommend that students take two classes at a time as it does stretch the students comfort level without being too overwhelming. Many students though, take one class at a time and do well, I think because they do devote a lot of energy to working with the movements and exploring them. All the movements sort of weave back together at some point, Lorrie

Hi there, When I tried to look up your account on the site, there was no account for ArcaneHuman, I think you may have only created an account on the forums? There are actually two places you need to create an account, you can use the same password for ease of remembering but the are two different accounts. I created an account for you, I'll pm the password to you. Let me know if this did not fix the problem. Lorrie

I've given you access to the Spirals 1 student forum so that you can ask questions there, that is the best place to ask as it keeps everything from getting scattered all over the forums and you've taken the class and are clearly interested in using the practices and learning more: https://www.shamanscave.com/forum/forum/6-spirals/ Basically, the intents can be stored in different areas of your energy body, so good work in being able to recognize where they are. When you take Recap., you will learn how to target those areas in your body to get access to the memories behind those intents you formed and recover it as well as the intent itself. The Recap and Spirals practices go hand in hand in helping to recover energy that you have trapped in different parts of your physical and energetic body over your lifetime. So you are doing things correctly. What the Recap will do for you in this process is to help you not only recover the energy from these experiences but it will also help you to understand and recognize the patterns in your life that got created over time either from these experiences or were reinforced as a result of the patterns once in place.

Hi Arcane, As far as the start date of the next Recap class, it's currently set for December 11th with a cut off sign up date of December 18th because we allow people to sign up after the class starts for a week, maybe two at which point they can still get caught up but after that, there really is a cut off date. That being said, the start date could get pushed back to December 18th if we have low signups and want to give it another week, so it's not set in stone. The class will definitely go a lot deeper into recap than just the basic exercise you see on the site, each week will focus on a new area of recap. so that you can learn different ways to get at recovering energy that's tied up within your energy body. There really isn't a class to fill in that time place, we are working on self-study classes but even if we had them, they would run 7 weeks like a normal class. But you bring up an interesting idea, maybe we should look at some mini-classes on topics that could be covered in a shorter period of time. Regarding the spirals exercise, seeing a void of nothingness behind everything is getting close. There definitely is a state of Potential there (we break time down into the Three P's Potential, Possibility and Probability energies but that is a subject taught over a few classes) I think you're close though, you're looking for the pulse that animates all life and everything in the universe and it is in Everything. It's the intent of the universe, it's the intent to live and take that next breath and the intent to know oneself and be who you are. It should feel vast but not so much a void, it is very full of intent.

We usually recommend taking Recap I and Spirals I to start out, it starts the self-healing process that will recover personal energy which will help you to do well in the other classes. Quicksilver is a class that would be okay to take starting out but it will touch on some things taught in Spirals, like intent but you've taken Spirals 1 (you must have taken the free version? I can't find the permissions for the spirals forum in your profile so I was wondering, it's still the same class material) so you have some of the needed training that will help you with this class. Shamanic Voice is an end of Tier 1 class so you would definitely need to take several prerequisites before attempting that one, it really relies a lot on material gone over in other classes. I would say the best options are Recap 1, to recover personal energy and heal your past and/or Quicksilver, which you will learn about using the energy of Awareness and Perception, which are the cornerstone practices of the Maker tradition (and really any shamanic tradition) . Lorrie

Excellent work, I think you are gaining traction and you are also recovering energy, if you are intending to release what is not yours and return to you what is yours, then you will get stronger and stronger - recover more and more energy over time and this will help as well. One other thing you can try when fear hits if you find white magick is not working so much is to try and flip your emotion to anger. Emotions are different poles in our energy and anger is the opposite pole of fear and you can cancel out your fear by switching to feeling angry (just imagine something that always makes you really angry) and that action will neutralize the fear because it's pulling it back from the fear pole to a more centered location in your energy. This will never wear off too, this will always work because emotions are part of our makeup. Nice work though, Im glad it's brought you some relief.

I think you can try working on it in a limited way u til you feel you are okay with delving into it. We call it 'working the edges' of traumatic events. I'm not sure where it's a bout of psychosis rather than an actual event in the past (although there may be a past connected event), where exactly to start. You could try recapping the days and hours leading up to it but stop short of recapping the actual psychosis. You could recap your life prior to the onset of this psychosis and stop just before. If this is not something you've had your entire life. The idea is to work on the peripherals and not dive full on into the worst of it emotionally. You could also work on recapping any other events in your life when you felt condemned but it wasn't part of a psychosis. Do you get where I am going with this? Don't re traumatize yourself through the recapitulate, take it in manageable pieces and as you work through them, you can gradually work your way in to the deeper stuff.

Yes, I never tire of hearing Shamanic Dream. I think whatever type of music helps you to move is okay. I tend to like music without words as it's less emotionally engaging and it doesn't distract me. I personally don't use any flute music but that's just me. However, I know a lot of people use this flute music, it's New Age, not Tibetan, I believe it uses Native American flutes but not sure: Coyote Oldman Tear Of The Moon https://youtu.be/HxLRkYrqU7I

Hi Amy, You actually can learn to journey without using drums or rattles. But starting out, it helps to have something to work with. Here are a couple of songs that you might find useful: An oldie but goodie

Hi, I hate to come back with a response of..." you would need to take a class here for us to show you how to properly journey" but that is the case. There are reasons for that beyond it being 'proprietary' information. The biggest reason concerns what you brought up yourself above about going overboard with risky stuff in the past. We move at. what many people would think, a slow pace here but there are good reasons for it. Being self-healed is the primary reason we don't jump in to deep journeying right away in classes here, because we try to get you self-healed to where you are detached enough and have eliminated your emotional 'hooks' to the point that you aren't susceptible or an easy target for certain energies out there. The other way we help prepare people for journeying 'systematically' through classes here is by training students to become aware of and learn how to control different aspects of their energy like their awareness, perception and dreaming energy. If you better understand how these energies work within you and you develop control over your intent and will, now you've got some skills and better control over your journeying and also a lot more personal power in that you can move better to wherever and whenever you want. Regarding guides and power animals, the makers differ from most other traditions (if not all that are teaching publicly) in that we do not teach how to work with power animals or guides. Students are welcome to use them if they want but we focus on teaching how to work with energy directly, which sounds a little bit what might be happening in your "message from on high." Basically, makers work with energy directly from 'source.' Sorry I can't provide you with journeying instructions but these are the reasons. Lorrie

Hi Hummingbird, Welcome! I love your user name. You can change your profile picture by going to your account drop down arrow and choose Profile and then just click on the photo button and you should be able to upload an image.

Um, AbusedBella, you say you've done your research on this, how did you research? Google doesn't count!

Hello Coywolf and welcome. I'm glad the material on the site speaks to you, it seems to either connect with people strongly or not. One of the first steps in shapeshifting is to move your awareness into the animal of choice, it sounds like you do this naturally. The why you are drawn to move into them and understand them is another matter and something that would be good to explore. There are techniques to understand why you have that strong connection as well as to verify one's energetic origins but it's not something that can be described in a forum post unfortunately. I think there is definite merit to exploring your connection with wolves because by understanding the how and why you will then know what you can do with it. One thing you can do right now is use the recapitulation technique http://www.shamanscave.com/self-healing/the-recapitulation to explore that connection. You can recap your memories and feelings around wolves, etc. and see what it reveals about your emotional connection to wolves in your past. Sorry i can't be more helpful but some of what you're asking about is quite advanced techniques. Lorrie