Urban Shamanism

The evolutionary potential of discomfort and distress

Yesterday, I talked a bit about the lessons that mom's pain and death taught me, and here's another I learned on my own during my spiritual journey: all forms of pain and illness indicate the passage from one state to another. Most people understandably detest illness, who could possibly enjoy feeling sick? We're taught to avoid that at all cost, to consume a medicine of some kind in order to feel better as quickly as possible, but I feel that some diseases, especially the ones that aren't lethal, shouldn't be hurried but allowed to run their course within us, because they're actually preparing us to adapt to new environments.

When I started attending ceremonies with ancestral plants, whose processes can be very unpleasant for the body and the mind, I began to realize that it wasn't the medicine that healed me, it only revealed the agents of discomfort and my choice to integrate them was the true reason for my healing. I've met many people in recent years who attend ceremonies regularly and still grapple with the things the plants have shown them; while listening to them and paying attention to their behavior, I've observed that the majority assume that taking medicine is the same as healing, and there's some sort of overarching issue there also, because I think they don't go to ceremonies to explore themselves, they go because of the vibration they experience in that context, the enormous joy when the sun comes up and the night's ordeal is over. They go back to it over and over, as if that alone signified that they've grown, but out of that environment, they still have the same fears and doubts, and live in the same predicaments as before. Sure, the ceremonies promoted a change, but any sublime experience could've promoted something similar.

I contracted COVID-19 in February and spent about a day with fever, but I was smiling through it because I could feel very palpably that the condition was upgrading my system. Even when the loss of taste and smell sunk in and the emotional backlash began, this awareness of the improvement that I was experiencing permitted me to shift the vibration and be thankful for the disease rather than reject it. Of course, I kept it under control with some pills and a wonderful infusion of onions and annatto that my family has been using for decades with great success, but those things only made the discomfort more manageable, I healed because I integrated the virus, received it in my cells, just like I did later with the vaccines. The illness was the medicine, the pills and the infusion merely eased the inclusion of that code into my body.

Every pain we go through teaches us something that we need to learn and it goes away only when we've learned it. Every disease is a mark of evolution and vanishes once we complete that evolution. What about chronic pain and lifelong conditions? They're the lesson in itself, my mom went through that and she's now elevated beyond these trappings because her suffering was her transcendence. We feel weak and exposed when we're ill because these processes demand openness, their codes have to get into our cells and bones, and that's not exactly natural for any of us, we have to unlearn many patterns and habits in order to feel at ease with vulnerability.

If you're currently going through situations of stress, feebleness, hurt or anguish, try to shift the perspective on how and why you're experiencing them. Go deep without fear and investigate your inner being, you're already under duress after all, so you might as well go all in and extract the information that the experience is giving you. Once you do, I guarantee that the density will decline, that you'll get the support you need and the means to make your life easier even if the conditions that ail you don't necessarily go away. My mom called her cancer, she willingly subjected herself to unimaginable torment for her own reasons and thus her only release was death, but we all do the same to varying degrees for our own reasons. We manifest our tyrants, our wounds, our poisons, our sickness, desert and grief, and from every single one of them we can extract learning and power.

Night Rune: Thurisaz

I receive a message from a friend and ignore it. I am visited by wild but friendly animals.

Daylight Rune: Perthro inverted

An unexpected consequence from a recent decision causes you difficulties, forcing you to reconsider goals and motivations. Your future is not in how you own, but in how much you use. The talents kept stored serve no purpose, squander your fortune for it shall be multiplied. Trust, question, expand your circle of influence and learning, remember that your voice resonates in the stars. Study your beliefs, the habits that you have formed, the monuments that you revere, the figures to whom you pledge your loyalty. There are pacts that you have already fulfilled and chains that you can break, manifest a purer, cleaner and more generous reality. Supreme caution with lies, as silly as they might appear. If you feel the lash it is because you have called it, What for? What did you hope to obtain with your sorrow?