Dear ones,
I encountered a woman, who lived in Mexico for years, had contacts with shamans there, was healed deeply and lived for one year in a tipi (Indian tent). She knows a shaman here in Ostend and it seems that many people receive healing.
Since my pain today again is uncredible, I would do everything to get rid of it. Mindfulness doesn't help much. Jesus prayer neither! However, by looking at google, I again was confronted with a wide diversity of opinions as always on the relation Christianity-Shamanism. Is it pagan, forbidden (Deuteronomy...)? I have been involved with occult practices (a medium, fire walk) before and I don't want to be unfaithful to Christ, but at the same time I realize more and more (through the Orthodox tradition of Mount Athos and perennialism and Christian gnosticism and...) that there is a lot more to being a Christian than most of the (certainly evangelical)Christians know about!I read 'A different Christianity' by Robin Amis, a must-read: http://www.praxisinstitute.net..._christianity.htm!!! and also http://www.amazon.com/Gnosis-E...dition/dp/1872292100 Mouravieff must be very good. I didn't read yet: http://www.cassiopaea.org/cass/mouravieff1.htm
I also start having problems with a strictly devotional approach and attending Eucharist disturbs me more and more because of all these words and words and morals. Do this, do this, but how to do it is something no one speaks of! And I feel that even within Western monastic tradition at least here in Belgium and West-Europe many things are lost. What about consiousness, the struggle with inner demons, creativity, sexuality. It is all so rational! In this sense I feel inclined to go to this shaman. But what do you people think of this? Is my pain (and anger!) probably a result of evil spirits that don't want to let loose?
Again confusion all over the place, since this therapist (primal) in Brussels is also so quiet and just listening after 2 sessions...
I wait for a silent retreat with a Carmelite in October and 8 weeks program of Mindfulness...
People with Kundalini experiences may be helpful here?
Help!
Fred

Fred:

I hope you'll stay with the therapy. All of this restless searching seems to express such pain - with the intellectual urgency seeming more the expression than the primary issue. Letting another person inside you where you hurt may clarify and ease a lot of these concerns. More searching without connection with another person intimate to the pain (over an extended period of time) will probably just send you in more circles. Let yourself hurt. It hurts to read your posts. You've got to be in such pain!! Don't run off now that you've begun to open up to someone who is just beginning to know you. And don't expect her to be perfect, or have the answers. You don't need - and can't have- perfection in anything. And you may not need answers as much as you think. Your head will get relief as your heart opens to company and the richness of longing for love that is in the pain.

Your concern that the therapist is just listening may suggest a challenge when you're with her: slow down. Stop talking for minutes at a time. Learn to bear the silences so your heart can gather itself to speak more directly and simply. That's scary, but crucial in therapy. Let yourself experience that she is seeing you: the hurt little boy that can't get a word in edge-wise as long as you're trying to find refuge in your head.

What pain are you talking about, Freddy? Emotional? Or the pressure in your chest, or what?

I think all your frantic searching is part of the problem.. relax, let go and let God.

Some questions: Are you under a doctor's care? Do you take medication? Do you think you might have OCD? What is your lifestyle? You drinking enough water, etc. etc.? Are you breathing "right"? :-)

Praying for you,
Katy

Hey Freddy!

Are you familiar with "prayer ministry" as exemplified with the Kylstras or the Sandfords (google them)? These folks and others have developed an incredible methodology for ministering inner healing for believers... this is something you can do with a close friend, or if there is nobody who can do this with you you can do it by yourself and the Holy Spirit. I had to do it by myself and it brought a significant amount of healing and freedom for me... you might check this out! It takes some time and effort but it is well worth it, IMO.

Please don't visit the shaman as IMO it will open spiritual doors for negative and hostile energy to enter your life that you don't want or need!!!

Blessings to you my brother in Jesus Christ,

Caneman

Fred, I think you're getting some good feedback from the group, here. A number of people have taken time through the months to respond to your posts, and I'm wondering what you're hearing?

I'd like to especially support w.c.'s recommendation that you continue with the counseling. Also, less reading, as you seem to get yourself all riled up with countless questions about matters that don't seem (from where I sit) relevant to the pains and struggles you experience. So I'm glad to hear you'll be making an 8-day retreat soon (a suggestion -- take only a Bible with you).

Prayers and best wishes. Keep us posted on how things are going for you.

Thanks to everyone for the replies.
I am so unstable and so easy to influence at the time!http://soundandsilence.wordpress.com/2008/01/27/the-shamanic-shadow-in-the-3rd-millennium/
http://www.innertraditions.com...String=1-59477-086-7
http://www.martinrothonline.com/MRCC42.htm
http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Is_i...aman_and_a_Christian (read especially this text!)
I notice more and more how many things the Church has adopted in the course of history. For Clemens of Alexandria and numerous others, the Logos was at work in different traditions. Read something of the perennialists: http://www.worldwisdom.com/public/home.aspx
At the same time I am aware of the dangers.

Good suggestion, WC not to talk too much when I am with the therapist. I thought about it. The man has a lot of experience, is not a Christian, but very realistic. He met several so-called enlightened persons, that emotionally seemed to be children or very neurotic. Hed was a friend of jea

He was a friend for many years of Jean Klein: http://www.nonduality.com/klein.htm
He met several so-called enlightened persons in the East but noticed they were emotionally like children or very neurotic. So, he is very down-to-earth and realistic which I like and which I need.http://membres.lycos.fr/deyn/en/index.html
But I am so impatient!
I think the retreat with Carlos Noyen, Carmelite will do me good. I know him very well. Good conferences, much silence.
And the mindfulness training? Did someone of you go through this program?
Greetings in Christ,
Fred

http://membres.lycos.fr/deyn/en/index.html
Fred

The brave act of Truly Listening!
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quote:

Originally posted by w.c.:
I hope you'll stay with the therapy...

Your concern that the therapist is just listening may suggest a challenge when you're with her: slow down. Stop talking for minutes at a time. Learn to bear the silences so your heart can gather itself to speak more directly and simply. That's scary, but crucial in therapy. Let yourself experience that she is seeing you: the hurt little boy that can't get a word in edge-wise as long as you're trying to find refuge in your head.

Fred, I think those are very wise words by WC. The confrontation he suggests is potentially a very beneficial one, even though you may well find it excruciatingly difficult. For the silence WC recommends requires an act of true bravery!

May I offer a few additional thoughts...?

True therapy is about listening, not about talking, It�s about listening to "aspects of self" that may be hidden in darkness, wounded, suppressed, or not given sufficient space in our lives.

The therapist shuts up to give them room, perhaps asking questions to allow you to give them a voice...

True therapy is about recognizing and uniting "aspects of self", and (in my view) ultimately awakening to Self!

I sometimes wonder if the problems many people experience related to prayer aren�t somewhat related to this. In essence: If someone is chattering away with inner dialogue, for whatever good reason, then it may well be more difficult to hear God�s will.

Listening, you can also hear yourself more clearly. Listening, you allow your deepest feeling, thoughts and yearnings to find expression. And those don�t need a lot of words!

Prayer is the art of listening with the heart.


Fred, may God�s Peace be with you on your Path!

-- HeartPrayer

Heart Prayer,
Thank you so much. Indeed 'Heart prayer'!
My third session yesterday and Luciamo advice me to look at an to listen indeed to the pain. he asked for an image. I spoke with this 'stone' and this 'hole' inside my chest. For the first time I clearly saw what therapy is all about. Before I was always talking about the past or the future and so I escaped the present moment.
I just had a reunion with my colleagues and there was so much pain, uncertainty, shame, almost paranoia. They are jabbering away, telling jokes, I find it all so superficial. I know this is life, this is the world we live in, I know I cannot judge, but I wonder what is going on and I feel the loss of morality, of beauty, of true life growing day by day...But I also feel I am already more able to stay with this, without judging it. Things are becoming more clear to me. Tonight the first 'mindfulness' session. Pray for me.
Greetings in Christ,
Fred

That's really good news Freddy. Painful, but good. There's probably something really rich hidden in that stone, and in the hole.

Freddy, This sounds like really fertile ground you�re exploring together! I think what you are doing is brave and wish you all the best. You are in my prayers.

I have been to this charismatic healing retreat. Ten women, the Carmelte monk and I. Every day bible texts to ponder on in silence and personal counseling (?) by the monk and a lay woman.
A girl friend went with me and this was part of the reason that it was so difficult to keep silent. The main reason was the big temptation of the large library and the intense pain in my chest (without wishing to be boring).
I was especially confronted with my extremely polarizing mind!I heard the word fall 'expect something' and immediately I draw back, having thought always that one has to 'wait without expectation of whatever' as in Zen, Vipassana, Mindfulness, Jesus Prayer and in f.e. Christian conformity to the Divine Will in the here and now
(de Liguori, de Caussade, brother Lawrence and many other saints). But is it as with all paradoxes not and/and instead of either/or?
You may ask and even wrestle with God (see Jesus and Paul) until the event of surrender/acceptance.
But if every moment (the sacrament of the now) is the expression of the Divine Will, I ask myself whether God was also in the woundedness of my youth and in all suffering. Was it His will? Did He let it happen? 'He uses everything for the good'... ? Why then would therapy be of any importance, unless the pain is unbearable. But if one can say yes to everything (see prayer of Elisabeth of the Trinity and Charles the Foucault) is this not holiness?
Another thing that stroke me and sometiumes surprised me a great deal was the psychological interpretation of texts in the Bible. At first I thought this is too much psychologizing, but it confronted me witrh some sort of old ingrained concepts and images of God, salvation, spiritual life and so forth. I admit I am not quite clear with this. When someone like Dom Marion (Maredsous years '20) expresses in a most beautiful and clear and touching language the person and work of Christ and His death as vicarious suffering and satsfaction to the Divine Righteousness, I hear now that this Old Testament God of revenge and wrath and righteousness has been dealt with in the NT and is old theology? The same with suffering. God wishes is to be whole, healthy, fully living persons! Of course we won't make another model of perfectionism of this healing business. But what about virtus, nepsis, puritas cordis, humility, self-denial and so forth...?
I had questions with all this, since I notice that the desert fathers are speaking in some way another language. Of course towards the end of the week, things were balanced, when the monk spoke about the thorn in the flesh of Paul and of the meaning of suffering, but in the whole, I feel I am more at home with this therapy in Brussels and with Mindfulness, though these practices are not pers� Christian. Healing is not a kind of hocus pocus (which this wise monk, who knows very well John of the Cross and Theresa of Avila of course knows). I was reading some things by Merton, Lassalle, Durckheim, Massa, the Cloud, John of the Cross, J�ger... and I feel that the apophatic tradition or object-free meditation or deep body awareness is a way to make the ground of the heart/nous fertile to really accept the Word. There is an interaction/continuity/connection between the Word from without and the Word from within. Ruusbroec: 'inweerts-uutweerts.
Some women received also images during Eucharist that were speaking to my condition and were confirmed by bible texts the day after. After all, without 'feeling' anything, I believe certain things have after all happened, a.w. more some more insight in my life: become a child and live!

Some reply? Phil, I heard before you come from a charismatic background?
All the best

Here I am again! I realize this is not belonging to this topic 'Shamanism and Christianity', but I don't know where to put this message...

Yesterday I went to the Mindfulness session. It was about yoga. I noticed while practicing these asanas that I tried to go beyond my limits. This has clearly to do with my perfectionism.
I ask myself whether the hypervigilance I feel in me from my youth on is a real obstacle to letting go. I read what WC said about this on another thread.
Another question is whether this awareness of or concentration on the breath does not create a very narrow,tunnel-like perspective instead of the broad space awareness as in Advaita or Vipassana. Since my breath is restricted and my chest feels constricted, I wonder whether a more broad awareness is not a better practice for me.
I read Keating on the continuum of different practices. Can anyone give some advice?
Also on Mindfulness?
Thanks

Dear Freddy,

I am sorry that I haven't been available to you by phone but am listening to my body and taking care of myself as I recover from my illness. But reading your posts, I just wanted to remind you of something Phil wrote. on 26 September last.

" Fred, I think you're getting some good feedback from the group, here. A number of people have taken time through the months to respond to your posts, and I'm wondering what you're hearing?

I'd like to especially support w.c.'s recommendation that you continue with the counseling. Also, less reading, as you seem to get yourself all riled up with countless questions about matters that don't seem (from where I sit) relevant to the pains and struggles you experience. So I'm glad to hear you'll be making an 8-day retreat soon (a suggestion -- take only a Bible with you)."

Can you hear Freddy, can you hear? Perhaps read all the beautiful posts which people sent to you during the past few months, and maybe you might glean something from within.

Best

Clare