In 2000, I created my neoshamanic practice, Soul Intent Arts. I’d worked with others for two years, and had crafted a personal animistic path with strong shamanic influences for ten years prior. Making the transition from spiritual seeker to committed shamanic practitioner was a huge step. Twenty-two years of experience seeing life through a shamanic lens and working with others has given me insights that feel right to pass along at this auspicious time. To celebrate Soul Intent Arts’ presence in this plane and this exceptional dance we’re doing toward this Winter Solstice, I’m closing this momentous year by listing my ten most poignant observations of personal shamanic work and maintaining a shamanic practice, and will present them over the next few days.

Thank you to all of the readers, clients, students, confidantes, comrades, and spaceholders who have contributed to Soul Intent Arts’ sustaining life force. Bless all of your dear hearts.

• All creatures tend toward balance, wellbeing. There is no such thing as good or bad, only the disconnection from wellbeing. “Good and “bad” are value judgements based on perception. I encounter many energies that are imbalanced, what one might call dark entities, demons, suffering spirits, and just plain souls of sick people. I have run into some sticky situations, some flat out scary interactions. In all of these, I have never encountered an entity that did not on some level recognize connection to All Things, which implies a connection to light, love and compassion. Did I drag them all screaming toward that light when they rejected it? No. I’ve never been dragged toward a light that I instantly embraced, and I’ve never known others who have. It is not my role to interfere. It is my role to meet beings where they are, to embody as much of myself as I know myself to be in all my light and shadow, to present the spectrum of wellbeing that is available to us all, and to support the diverse paths we all take in reaching that balance. Other perspectives on how we reach healing are presented in To Heal or Not to Heal: Shamans in the New Era.

And one more, because I have never been good at math:

• Karma is as karma does. I frequently run into the notions that karma is reward or punishment, and that it’s set for all eternity. My work has shown me that neither of those things is true. Karma is not a system of reward and punishment, but a law of balance. How you create yourself is the way you will be, and it is the way the world will form around you. We have the power to change our karma by releasing outdated patterns. Releasing patterns frees us to recreate ourselves. In this way, destiny and free will work together to create healing. Karma, Collective Conscious, and Facebook.

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