Most Shamans receive some kind of call. It is a haunting call which is often resisted or muted, but which makes itself heard. There is no joy until you follow your path. My path to shamanism began with an unexpected pilgrimage into the rainforests of Ecuador, where I was introduced to a different world, one that pulsed with a vibration I could not name, one that resonated within in strange new and unrecognized ways. Returning from the rainforest after receiving shamanic work there, I fell into poetry, then energy work, writing and the healing path as if it had been laid out for me and I was a lost traveler following a winding path with no clear sight of where I was heading except to follow an urgent need to keep going, to see around the next bend, to discover, to follow the light ahead.
One of the first poems I wrote upon my return was prophetic, it was from spirit to myself – I did not even really know what a shaman was, yet my heart wrote this. The rainforests of Ecuador are a different reality here on earth….go to them to listen with your heart.
Shaman
Shaman’s voice
The forest calls
Raining down upon us all
The far-flung sound of nature’s fall
At our feet the invite sings
Waiting for our minds to bring
It to fruition
Among the tribes of people
Waiting in their wisdom
Teaching us their language
Spirit guides to recognize
We hesitate and falter
Cannot conceive or alter
Our state of being deep implanted
To receive an older knowledge
In the arms of oneness
In the spirit of the living
Things before we came to be
How we struggle to see
And hear and connect
To threads broken by long neglect
Deep into our spirits go
And look at pools of knowledge known.
Reach and listen look and sense
What is there beyond conscious consent
To places where still we go
About with older wisdom shown
Within the gleaming point perceived
When first the shaman's voice received
A forest calls, an earth lays wait
Upon the frailness of this gate
Go to the places in your heart
Where once you heard them speak
And listened child-like
In your sleep.
© Deborah Lynn 2010
