Journey to Wholeness

My three year apprenticeship in core shamanism is coming to a close – with just a few more sessions remaining, I am already feeling nostalgic. I love the depth of the work, the relationship with spirit that has formed and expanded over time with careful focus. I will forever embrace the circle in which I’ve learned so much – I’ve made the most beautiful soul connections with my fellow apprentices. One of the neat aspects to learning in this circle setting is the growing power and expansion we’ve made as a group. The group we are today is not the group we were even a year ago. We only grow deeper into our hearts and more expansive in our being.

Another joyous aspect of this journey together is that we get to simultaneously learn how to become practitioners for others and get pieces for our own journey. I’ve been healing myself while learning to help others heal themselves! It’s amazing and beautiful. I look forward to see what the future holds for me as a life long student of shamanism. It is so huge, so wide, so expansive across time, space and culture that I have barely dipped my toe in the water in the physical plane! That is exciting to me!

I’ve had two soul retrievals done before – once by a person in my circle, once by my teacher. Each time, I felt a sense of wellness and ease, joy at what miracle had occurred for me. I love that you can tell a shamanic practitioner almost nothing about yourself, and spirit gives them all the appropriate details that just let you know – that soul retrieval actually just happened. It’s a beautiful thing, a sacred thing. That resonant feeling in your heart just lets you know, this is good, good stuff.

I always knew (before I even came to shamanism) that I had experienced soul loss at age 6 in my childhood. I can look back and see the many ways I identified with that time in my life, repeating patterns in relationships that reflected the way my little soul took off to the spirit world for safety and protection. In the event of soul loss, we repeat patterns reflective of the initial loss, in a subconscious attempt to regain that inner light/power of the soul. It’s also worth mentioning again, as I do on my page about the soul retrieval process, that in shamanic/tribal/ancient cultures that honored the soul, soul loss was tended to within days of the event that caused it.

I’d also like to add that, to my 30-something self, what caused soul loss in my child self does not seem so bad. Childhood soul loss is seemingly very common in our society; we are tender as children, much more sensitive than when we become adjusted as adults. In my experience, it is very common to see childhood soul loss from fairly ‘normal’ happenings.

Both of my prior soul retrievals were fantastic and resonated with me deeply but I won’t lie to you, dear blog readers, I felt a little bummed that no one encountered 6 year old Amy. I wondered why this was, and what could be the meaning for that. There was some personal mystery in that for me. This world is a challenging place to navigate for our eternal and perfect souls; we are light, we come from light, and this world is, well… a bit dense. So when I didn’t get back that pivotal soul part, I really wanted to understand why.

For quite a few years now, I’ve been doing so much work with the second chakra or the sacral chakra. The second chakra has a lot to do with the relationship to SELF and to others, creativity, emotions, and sexuality. Much of my personal journey has been centered around these themes, and it makes sense when connecting with the more basic energy of the second chakra to when I experienced this major soul loss at age six. That’s right about the time that energy center is said to be in development – so it makes perfect sense that I’d have work to do with this chakra.

Recently, I’ve been embracing my creativity in a new way and allowing it to flow through me, while maintaining balance in my relationships with what my loved ones need from me, but also what I need from myself. Loving and accepting myself, allowing my own personal gifts to shine and not shying away from that for fear of being “different.” I’ve been working so much with these themes of self-love in an authentic way in my every day life. This reflected in my personal work in the circle that day; each journey for myself presented the same themes, with further development and deeper understanding each time.

This weekend in the circle, we partnered up for our final journey of the day, with a question from our partner that we’d present to the spirit world for answering. My question to my partner was something to the effect of, how can I believe in myself? I can’t remember my exact wording at the time, but it was in that theme of self-acceptance. Imagine my surprise when my partner facilitated a soul retrieval for me! Another soul retrieval! What a lucky gal 😉

When my partner began to share with me her healing story of what she encountered in the spirit world, I began to cry tears of joy and felt a depth of gratitude. She saw little six year old me in a school uniform (I never shared that I went to private school, just to be clear!), playing joyfully in some far reaches of the spirit world. I guess that soul part felt safe there! It took a bit of bargaining to get this part back (I’ve always been pretty persistent in knowing what I want for myself, ha!) including the persuasion of some big cats, which I’ve always adored and resonated with since childhood. She also intuited my breathing issues, another thing I hadn’t shared with her, but apparently this is very much a part of my journey to wholeness. Synchronicities abound, of course, as spirit communicates to us this way when we are in the flow.

After that, it became abundantly clear: in order to get this pivotal piece of me back to wholeness, I had to do the work first. I had to make my inner world a comforting, healthy place with love and self-acceptance for that part of my pure essence to return to me. Since that moment, my light has been shining much brighter, I feel truly whole. I can’t explain to you the deeply transformative effect having this critical piece of me back is having on me in just a few days time. I feel so ready to move on to the next phase of my journey, now with this light that belongs to me, returned. When I finally realized that I have to love MYSELF, instead of loving what others saw in me (can be expressed as ‘fear of abandonment’ or ‘not worthy’), only then could this perfect childlike expression of self return to wholeness. This definitely brings a whole new meaning to the aspect of “inner child” – work that I always admired as super important but couldn’t connect with in an entirely meaningful way for myself. Now? It’s time to PLAY!

I am enjoying feeling so much lighter, feeling comfortable in myself, and just embracing this newfound wholeness. I’ve seen first hand the transformation that occurs after a soul retrieval. I guess I didn’t realize that sometimes it takes more than one pass-through. This has no reflection on the healer/helper facilitating the session, but everything to do with where you’re at in your personal development. Sometimes we have to uncover more layers, heal more hurts (because we can only do that for ourselves), and then get to the juiciest parts of ourselves that make us who we are.

Soul retrieval is an ancient and miraculous practice. I am so honored to have had the opportunity to experience it, and to facilitate that for others.

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