I Talk To The Trees

It has been a rather crazy month.  My wife has been overseas caring for her mother and so I have been Dad and Mr. Mom to three teen-aged boys for the past month.  This sort of put a cramp on my writing but she is back, and so am I.  

The theme for the last few blogs has been about being a contemporary shaman.  One of the activities I put on the list was facilitating connection with power animals and guiding spirits so that's sort of the theme for this blog post.

I don't know about you, but I dislike the idea of spiritual intermediaries, "special" people who stand between humanity (you and me) and the divine.  These highly educated and "spiritual" individuals assume that they are specially qualified and called to act for the divine on earth because we don't have the needed qualifications to interact directly with the divine on our own behalf.  I have several problems with this model.  First of all, if the divine cares about us, and I'm sure that It does, then It doesn't need someone to translate its messages to us.  Being divine it is sufficient wise and powerful to communicate directly with us . . . we just need to be tuned in and listening.

In the same manner, the divine doesn't need an especially trained communicator to transform our thoughts, needs, desires, wishes, or prayers if you will, into a form that is understandable by the divine.  I'm sure that the divine is more powerful, wiser, and a lot smarter than I can even imagine.  Consequently I expect that the divine has taken my thoughts, needs, desires, wishes, or prayers into account even before I am able to articulate them.  No intermediary is necessary.

Third, the divine doesn't need special rites and ceremonies to function . . . remember its much wiser and more powerful than we are.  Rites and ceremonies are for those of us here that, for some reason, either need them or find them useful allegories and we learn from them.  All of us are capable of developing our own meaningful rites and ceremonies.  If fact, if we put our hearts into their development then they will touch us more deeply than a ceremony performed by someone who has memorized a script.  My one consistent, day-after-day ceremony is my morning invocation and even it changes from day-to-day.  I have written about it before.

Shamanic journeying to meet and communicate with our power animals and spirit guides is something that you can do for yourself.  It's your way, and maybe not the only way,  that you are able to interact with other energies.  I might be able to journey for you to find out who your power animal is, or ask for a message for you from one of your spirit guides, but I won't do it. Your communication with the divine and with other energies should be your communication. What I will do is teach you how to take shamanic journeys so that you can meet and communicate with them for yourself on your own.  That's the way that it should be.  No spiritual practice should disempower you. 

If you have never taken a shamanic journey and would like to read more about it then here are a few of my previous posts about journeying:

• Core Shamanism, Part 1
• Core Shamanism, Part 2
• Core Shamanism, Part 3 (Power Animals)
• Core Shamanism, Part 4 (Your First Shamanic Journey)

Hope to meet you soon sitting under a tree in the lower world on a shamanic journey.  Use the contact me form if you have any questions about shamanic journeys.

Dr. Dave

PS:  About the title.  The Smothers Brothers had a comedy act back in the 1960 and in one of their skits Tommy Smothers didn't understand why someone would talk to the trees.  I talk to the trees and they do answer back . . . try it.  Just so you know, The Smothers Brothers were awarded the George Carlin Freedom of Expression Award from the Video Software Dealers’ Association in 2003.

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Photo by Karine Germain on Unsplash