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 The Shamanic Approach |
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Many spiritual traditions explore what it means to commit oneself to a path of service. I resonate most strongly with the values of the shamanic tradition.
Shamanism has often been called “the path of the wounded healer.” The following excerpts describe my beliefs about the relationship between wounding and healing, and my approach to the work I do.
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The shamanic path is one of brutal self-honesty, intense personal healing, and deep self-knowledge. It also includes a responsibility to be of service to one's self and to the community.
The individual who has been wounded and healed is most capable of healing — and of understanding the wounds of others. This is especially true when the wounded individual is directly and consciously involved in his or her own healing process. In our own search for wellness and balance, we gain the methods and abilities to heal, and to empower others to create their own healing... We cannot truly walk this path without facing up to our own wounds. When we allow ourselves the freedom to experience our wounds, we begin the healing process.
The path of the healer...can be frustrating, painful and sad at times. It is incredibly humbling and empowering at the same time. It is also a path filled with joy, blessings and wonder. To be a healer is to hold oneself to a high level of integrity and ethics. It is to give of one's time and energy in service to the community. It is to set aside egocentrism so that we may merge with something much greater than the individual identities we wear in this lifetime.
Our preparation for healing is multidimensional and ongoing... The healer should not be seen as the ultimate end, the culmination and epitome of perfection and clarity, but rather as someone who has answered a calling and is consciously following the path toward wholeness.
—Kristin Madden, The Book of Shamanic Healing
“The extent to which you're committed to your own process is the extent to which you can serve others. The intent to serve is a powerful vehicle for purification and transformation. You have to be willing to do whatever you have to do — to look at whatever you have to look at in yourself, no matter how painful. Pain is a great colleague in the healing process. A big part of the path is learning to reformulate your own personal energy, so you can better carry the divine — in order to help put others in contact with their own life energy. It's all about becoming a vessel capable of holding your portion of light. By changing yourself, you become a vehicle through which the universe can work to bring more light onto this plane.
“You have to be willing to be as powerful as you can be, at this stage of your evolution. You have to be willing to step up to the plate and say, Here I am, I'm not perfect, but I'm willing to be here. There's no room for shrinking violets or false humility.
“We're here for healing, we're trying to create more light. There's a lot of fear, and we're trying to create a space here where there's no fear — well, there's no way to eliminate fear, but we can change our relationship to it through the compassionate holding of all phenomena. And then each of us in our lives can begin to make inroads, getting fear to untwist so we can use the energy we had bound up in fear, for something else. That's what the healing journey is all about.
“Compassion is the only thing that heals.”
—Personal notes from talks given by Isa Gucciardi, Ph.D.
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