Through the long dark, well meaning and trusting souls have been led (and misled) by gurus and spiritual leaders who themselves were just doing their best during a time when true access to Spiritual information and guidance was rare, if not nonexistent. In order to feel more confident about the guidance they were receiving, the followers started viewing their spiritual leaders as perfect, above them and omnipotent. This resulted in putting absolute power in the hands of many who were as unprocessed as those they professed to lead. "Absolute power corrupts absolutely."

Now, as we reenter the photon band and more light is present to operate in, many of us are waking up to find ourselves dissatisfied with where we are spiritually. The frozen truths that were left to most religions no longer satisfy us. The pollution during the time when direct access was not available has resulted in dogma and exploitation that we are unwilling to participate in any longer.

This is a volatile and dangerous time for us all. It is important not to throw the baby out with the bath water. While what is left of most religions may not be as pure or reliable as we like, we now can obtain direct personal access to spiritual guidance. Through our personal connection, we can ask and be shown what path will best bring us as individuals back to balance. We can also be shown the truth underlying the distortion and dogma.

It is for this reason, as the head instructor of Path Home Shamanic School, you may hear me quoting from the bible one minute, and performing a sweat lodge the next. Am I mixing altars and practices? Am I appropriating Ceremonies? Am I imposing a particular religion on my students? The answer to all of these questions is no. What I am doing is creating living ceremony, guided by a direct access to Spirit, using the principles preserved by various religions and peoples to help empower the people of our time and location. 

Particular rituals were formed to cooperate with the powers of a place. Is it any surprise that when we access Spirit and ask, as the indigenous peoples did, how to find spiritual balance in these same places, that what we are given is the similar principles? The principles were and remain sound. It was the misunderstanding and exploitation of them during the long dark that resulted in the dogma and polarization we commonly find today.

When someone comes to my door and tries to convert me, or when someone approaches me questioning my right to practice shamanism when I am a white woman, I take a deep breath and answer their questions the best I can. Even though I recognize their questions are not questions at all but thinly veiled challenges, judgment and condemnations, I feel it is important to honor their path with courtesy. They are, after all, on their path, a path that was originally established in truth, a path that may well lead them home.

It is a time when some of us are put in a position to transcend the old forms. Because we have been on our healing path and have become processed and whole enough to be given enough insight to hold true to the principles upon which all religions were established. In this way we can and reenter living truth. As with all things, truth evolves. Every stage of every religion serves the evolution of its participants according to their personal contract with Creator.

If you are one of the ones presently evolving beyond the established religions, if you are living your life following guidance received by direct access to spirit, there comes a time when you have to take total responsibility for your path or it halts. In order to transcend, we need to let go of our gurus and spiritual leaders. We can not hold them above us or responsible for our experience. Only by radical trust and adherence to our own connection with Spirit can we truly find our personal path home.

In friendship,

Gwilda

Featured Article:

I'M AFRAID OF THE DARK
by Chris Gray

I used to pride myself on a certain personae, a tough girl image that fit in with being a Native New Yorker…New York City, to be exact. All right, so I couldn't really claim that, I was born and raised and lived the majority of my life in the nearest suburb in to the city. A suburb where in parts of it you could cross a street and be in the Bronx, cross back, and be in Westchester County. It was a wealthy bedroom community, an easy 30 minute commute to Grand Central Station and the heart of Manhattan. 

My girlfriends and I would hop on the train and go to Grand Central and walk the two blocks west on 42nd street that put you smack in the middle of the red light district. By the time I was 12 the sight of sex shops, prostitutes, winos, junkies, kiosks where for a quarter you could watch a two minute porn flick and movie houses that catered to the XXX crowd were routine. Perhaps it was our youth that saved us from getting into any trouble. Perhaps it was our guardian angels. 

I had a friend who preferred to walk the two blocks east that took you instead to the clothing shops and record stores (yes, records) that better suited her penchant for kleptomania. She had tons of music, clothing and make-up for which she never paid a cent. My goody-two-shoes heart eventually made me stop going with her. I didn't approve of stealing.

By the time I got to be old enough to live in the city, I was a true urbanite, despite my cushy suburban upbringing. I loved the pace of life. I had a true New Yorker's arrogance about the rest of the world. Why live anywhere else when you already lived in the most happening place on the planet? You could hear any language spoken on Earth today. You could routinely see people of almost every culture, religion, color and socio-economic stature, eat their food, buy their clothes and other products; in short, step into a small taste of that other culture just by walking in the right neighborhoods. 

It's really a pretty overwhelming assault on your senses to live in such an interesting and demanding environment. You don't get much of a chance to experience who you really are on the inside or question your perceptions of reality as perhaps not being the only way to be. Not until life comes along and kicks you in the teeth a few times, anyway. I'm surprised I have any teeth left, I've been kicked so many times. I joke about having learned practically nothing despite the hundred thousand hours of one form of therapy or other I've paid for. Despite the self help books, groups, workshops, energy trainings, gurus and forms of spiritual practice I've encountered and participated in along the way. After all that New Yorker is a tough so and so. She isn't going to give up without a good fight.

I've lived in Colorado almost 13 years now. I was forty when I got here. It's the only place other than New York I have lived, other than for the time it took me to go to college, and a relatively few trips to some other interesting places on the planet. I thought it would be "cool" to move to Boulder. I'd always wanted to go to college there, but my mother refused to send me so "far away" and I didn't have enough substance at the time to tell her to go fly a kite and come anyway.

Somewhere along the way my façade, much to my great benefit, began to break down. I found myself subject first to anxiety, after a while to panic anxiety. Things about my childhood I had hidden from myself bubbled up whether I wanted to look at them or not. I surrounded myself with other people who were searching for who they really were, too. Friends like that keep you on your toes. 

Often the path to healing was very scary and challenging. I kept on going because I knew stopping the process would be certain death…literal or figurative didn't matter. I didn't sign up for death…at least not yet. I have a lot of work I plan to do, God willing. The cracks and crumblings and challenges to my way of being have taken me down some fascinating paths. And, frankly, into an inner space so dark I didn't even know if there was a tunnel, never mind a light at the end of it. But here I am, alive and kicking, still keeping on despite the fear. 

Recently I had a chance to participate in a real vision quest; 48 hours in my own skin, by myself, in as wild and beautiful a wilderness as this urbanite is likely to encounter. Other people were all around me, but the point for me was to learn about myself. "Who am I?" I wanted to know.

The first thing I realized is that I couldn't have done this even four or five years ago. I would have gone nuts. I would have died of boredom. My fear of being alone, of the dark, of wild animals would have eaten me alive. I would have hated the rocks that stabbed me everywhere when I tried to lie down and rest. The trees, the red cliffs, the birds, the flies, the inchworms, the ants and even the bone chilling cold at night might have been grist for the mill that told me I was as out of my element as I could get. I had nothing to distract me from this inner dialogue. It surprised me to realize this could easily become 48 hours of complaint, anger, and discontent.

Luckily for me I got into process painting several years ago. You learn to paint for process, not for product. You learn to talk yourself through the judgments that would ordinarily stop you dead in your tracks. "That's the ugliest color I ever saw," you tell yourself after you've just painted half your canvas with it. "That painting looks like a five year old did it," you tell yourself of the work you've spent two days painting. "So what?" I say back. "So what if a five year old did it?" It's tremendously freeing. The inner five year old delights and picks up the paints and has a wonderful time. The canvas fills and it's glorious.

I'm not saying being on a vision quest is exactly the same. It's sometimes nice to have a little perspective on things, though, and a way to get that perspective for yourself. Maybe even a little sense of humor can sneak in. I listened to people laughing and having a good time in base camp while I sweated my behind off up by myself in my circle. First I was pissed off. "That noise disrespects my space, and my sacred work," I thought. I could feel the legs of my high horse begin to ratchet up. What was really going on for me? Was I a little jealous? I was suffering and they were over there having a good time. In my book they should be suffering, too. Did I oil the legs of my horse well? How high did I want to go above them in my noble quest? "Poor me," I finally said. Oh, just a little envy showing, that's all.

The point of all this, to me, is flexibility. We are supposedly on the greatest journey humanity has ever taken. We are passing through The Shift. It is an extraordinary time to be alive. Where we are shifting to, exactly, is anybody's guess. How we are going to get there has yet to be written. Many of the prophecies about this time have a precise ending, and a great void is all that appears after that. If we can't be flexible, how are we ever going to get there? There's no clear place to "shift" to. Point A isn't necessarily going to be followed by Point B. I think we better learn to hop around, and to be comfortable in that space of transition. If we are truly at the forefront, and we are truly trailblazers, then we better get comfortable in our own skin, no matter what's in there with us.

And hey, look at me. As much as I might like to claim to be special, I'm not. If I can do this, so can you. I invite you to hop along with me. I delight in the company.

_____________________________________________________________________  

Chris Gray is a graduating member of the 2005-2007 Eagle Clan class of Path Home Shamanic Arts School.

JOIN US AT THE DENVER CELEBRATION METAPHYSICAL FAIR!
AT THE DENVER MERCHANDIST MART, BOOTH #175
Labor Day Weekend
Friday, August 31 through Sunday, September 2, 2007
Friday 1:00-9:00pm, Saturday 10:00am-7:00pm, Sunday 10:00am-6:00pm

Please come join us at the Denver Merchandise Mart over Labor Day Weekend for the Celebration Metaphysical Fair.

Gwilda Wiyaka, founder and director of the Path Home Shamanic Arts School will be on hand to discuss the school and the upcoming certification program which begins this September.

Come listen to Gwilda give her talk on "Shamanism and Sustainability" (see below) at 2:00PM on Sunday, September 2nd. She will be addressing how shamanism can help us choose appropriate building materials, connect in a healthy way with the land, and many other important aspects of living more consciously with our mother, the Earth.

In addition you will be able to listen to the beautiful music of StarFaihre, as Cody Wigle and Gwilda Wiyaka perform their haunting and powerful shamanic songs. They will be performing on stage at the fair at various times throughout the day on Sunday, September 2nd.

For General Fair information: http://www.celebrationfair.com/index.htm
For Path Home Booth Location: http://www.celebrationfair.com/martmaps.htm
For Gwilda's Seminar: http://www.celebrationfair.com/dseminars.htm
For a list of Fair Vendors, including Path Home: http://www.celebrationfair.com/dvendors.htm
To learn more about StarFaihre: http://www.starfaihre.com


SHAMANISM AND SUSTAINABILITY by Gwilda Wiyaka
At the Celebration Metaphysical Fair
Sunday, September 1, at 2:00pm

JIt is becoming clear that sustainable living is a necessity if we are to leave our descendants the beautiful planet we have enjoyed. Yet when we speak of sustainable building most people have no idea where to start. Also, the very concept dredges up images of living in ugly, dark cave - like hay bale houses with dirt floors. Come listen to this exciting talk! Gwilda puts into clear, understandable terms how Shamanism can help us cooperate with the earth's natural rhythms, landscape, and beauty in all of our building and living practices.