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I had this wonderful idea that when I start telecommuting that I’d all of a sudden have lots of free time, and could do shamanic work to my heart’s content. Unfortunately, I’m all too good at sabotaging my own efforts. As a recovering workaholic, I’m very good at finding ways to fill up my time, and even though I’m not even working full time hours yet at my freelancing gig, I still find that I don’t really have enough time to do everything I want.
This has been a good challenge for me, though. Already I’ve managed to cut down a lot on my internet time; I’ve been staying almost entirely off of Livejournal for almost a week now, just to see how it frees up my time. And I’m trying to get better about managing free time, and not getting stressed when I find that it’s time to go to bed and there are still so many things left to do.
Historically, my spiritual life has been one of the first things to suffer when I’m overloaded. When I have physical deadlines to meet, and physical people yammering at me to get such and such done, and other physical projects to be completed, nonphysical concerns get put on the back burner. It’s not that I don’t want to be tending to spiritual matters, but my priorities have often been canted towards the material plane.
I think on some level I keep waiting for the spiritual smackdown that so many seemingly more serious practitioners speak of. It’s the idea that you can’t ignore your spiritual functions, and if you do, horrible things will happen to you. I don’t doubt that horrible things may indeed happen. However, I haven’t had things happen that I’d call horrible; I haven’t had all “my” spirits abandon me, or get in the way of things that are getting in the way of my spiritual life.
What I have had is pretty consistent pressure, both from within and without. It’s harder and harder to ignore the spirits, though on my end I’m also trying harder to stay “tuned in”. This means that I’ve slowly been increasing my reliability in my forays upstairs, as well as other things that need to be done.
Tonight I went upstairs, even though I was tired, just to touch base. I spoke with Small Wolf (the skin spirit–I am going to use these naming conventions to differentiate between totems and skin spirits of the same species). He noticed I was feeling frustrated about not doing more, not being up there dancing every night and working magic and making more connections–basically not taking advantage of every free moment I have. And you know what he told me? The same thing he’s told me several times since I started working with him more regularly: “You’re here, right now. That’s all that matters.”
And he’s right. I know that by some standards, my schedule is sloppy. I have never been able to handle a daily schedule, beyond saying prayers every night–and even then occasionally I fall asleep before I remember to say them. Despite the fact that I’ve managed to do a lot on my spiritual path, creating my own magical systems, I still sometimes feel a twinge of shame that I haven’t yet defeated my lack of a scheduled practice. It’s not that what I’ve done hasn’t been fruitful; however, I’m well aware of how much better my practice could be if I put something into it every day. It’s not about what I try–yoga stretching, various meditations, nature walks–but about my own tendencies and habits.
But I am making progress. The very fact that I am still committed to this path almost eight months after I started it says a lot for me. I’ve walked other paths for longer, but this is the most intense one I’ve had. I can look at my path since accepting the call to shamanism, though, and see that I have become better, relatively speaking. Despite my too-full life, I have managed to work with Small Wolf three to four times a week for the past couple of weeks, which is more than before. And I’m still focused on continuing this path, even though I sometimes get flustered because I see so many potential things I could be working on with it, so many tasks I could be taking on.
A lot of what I’ve been doing has been my usual manner of doing things–not on a schedule, but merely taking opportunities as they come up. Things like connecting to the Land when I go outside (or when I travel), and talking to the spirits of the plants in my garden, or remembering not to buy chemical-laden products because the Land protests at the potential effect, or my recent experiences with Water and Squirrel. However, I still make it upstairs some nights each week, and I haven’t forgotten. And each time, Small Wolf is right–each time I go up there is one more time than before. It all counts.
Sunday afternoon, my husband Taylor and I went for a seven mile hike out at Multnomah Falls. It was the first time I’d been out there since last November, and I really had missed it there (it missed me too, apparently!) We went on a trail I hadn’t walked before, though Taylor had been there on his own. The weather was perfect, and I felt rested and energized–I didn’t really feel tired at all until the last mile. Of course, such a long hike called for a post-hike trip to Burgerville, the Pacific Northwest’s regional chain of sustainably produced, not-full-of-ick-and-grease, burger joint.
But I digress.
It being the first really nice weather we’d had in a while, and being a Sunday, people were out in force; Multnomah Falls is a popular place, and you have to do some hiking to get past the touristy areas. It took longer than I expected, and I started to get grouchy. For me, hiking is a way to get away from most people, not hang out with them. I started getting snarly after a while.
At one point I complained “I wish these people weren’t here. The sad thing is, they’re probably mostly just going to go back home and keep living their usual lives, never thinking about the connection between the pristine condition of this place, and their environmentally unfriendly actions every day”. To which Taylor (who is used to my rantiness on the occasions where my temper still gets the best of me despite my efforts to the contrary) replied, “So how do you know that’s what they’re going to do?” I think I sputtered something about the litter on the ground, and other such things. I tend to be territorial about places I like, even when I have absolutely no claim to them whatsoever (yes, it’s silly of me).
Tay then said, “You don’t know what these people will do. Maybe they are learning and gaining an appreciation for this place. And after all, if your role as a shaman means teaching people to appreciate the wilderness, maybe you need to remember that people need to have this opportunity. Maybe, like me, they’ll get it figured out in time”, and he had a point. When I met him, he wasn’t all that interested in environmentalism, though he wasn’t against it, either. However, I’ve had a pretty solid impact on him in our relationship, and he’s adopted a lot of the same practices and mindfulness I have. We’ve had some good discussions about it, and that’s gotten us both to think.
Then I decided to talk to the Land. I went on a side trail down to the river we were walking along, and opened myself to the Land. What s/he said supported what Taylor had told me. S/he said that hir role at this point was to teach people to appreciate what was still relatively clean, though a bit of pollution had taken its toll in recent years. S/he told me to bring people to hir and to help teach them that appreciation and to make that connection with their everyday lives, that places just like hir had been destroyed or were in danger from our everyday practices.
S/he talked to me further about the concept of teaching, and basically explained that I did not (as I had been concerned in the past) have to take on full time students at this time. Instead, I mainly need to be teaching various lessons through various means as I learn and become comfortable with them. So, for example, my Three Seeds workshop that I held a couple of weeks ago, wherein I brought paganism, environmentalism, and community building all together in the process of gardening, counts as one way of fulfilling this need. Another is a proposed series of animal magic classes I may be teaching later this year in Portland. I can start with relatively short-term, low-commitment things like this, and then work up to more intensive things as I go along. This is a huge relief, believe me!
So that was a good reminder to me, that if I am going to help other people to understand that the Land and all hir denizens are sacred, then I have to accept that they all have equal access, and that some of them unfortunately will still do dumbass things like litter, and break down saplings for no reason, and so forth–but others won’t. It’s a good reminder of one teaching of Wolf’s that really rings true to my experience–Wolf connects with all to connect with a few. One would hope, though, that more than a few would “get it”!
It is good to also be reminded that lessons come in many ways and many forms. (Another one of this basic things that is good to remember no matter how long you’ve been practicing!) Just another good reason to keep one’s ears and eyes open (and, sometimes, one’s mouth shut as well).
Later on, as we stopped at our usual crosstrails to rest before descending the mountain, I heard an owl hooting slowly and quietly maybe 200 or so yards away in the woods. at the same time, I felt the presence of the Animal Father. No, I don’t think it was a disembodied voice–I’d lay money down that there was a physical owl there. However, I firmly believe that deities, spirits, and other such beings may use physical phenomena to make themselves known. I do not think it’s nearly as common as people might think–just because a squirrel runs across your path, it doesn’t automatically mean that Squirrel is your totem. What separated this event from any other encounter with critters that day (including a chipmunk, a hummingbird, and a bunch of white butterflies) was that I definitely felt the Animal Father’s presence. He was pleased that I was there, out in the wilderness again. He likes being in contact with me there more than other places, and he simply dropped by to say so.
Since I’ve started my new telecommuting job, I’ve started my day with meditation. Wolf has made it clear that s/he wants me to start working with hir more intensely, so tonight I’ll go up and start working on a drumbeat and song for hir. I’ve been taking it easy because of all the changes recently, but the spirits are letting me know it’s time to get back to business, as it were.
Hooray! I’m caught up on comments! Feel free to go to Therioshamanism if you left a comment to see what I had to say.
I do want to say thank you again for the ongoing comments. It’s nice to know that there are people reading, and that there are people who are inspired, and who have been helped, and sometimes who just want to say “I agree” or “Have you thought of it from this perspective instead?”
Well, three notes, actually.
1. WordPress, for whatever reason, doesn’t seem to want to consistently email people when new comments are made to posts they’ve already commented in. So it may be worth your while to go back and check comments you’ve made; I usually reply to all comments to a post.
2. I have started moderating comments, mainly because I’ve seen a bit of a jump in spam comments on my other blog, Pagan Book Reviews. I usually moderate comments within 24 hours during the week.
3. For those of you reading this on the Livejournal feed, I’d prefer it if you posted your comments on the WordPress blog rather than to the LJ feed post–I don’t get comment notifications for the latter. You don’t have to have a WordPress account to do so.
Thanks 
