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INSIGHTS FROM A SHAMAN'S MIND

In What World Do We Want To Live?

Ocean, Clouds and Light – I choose finding love

How I Found My Way To Deal With Charlottesville

On Friday, 14th of August, Neo-Nazis marched in Charlottesville, USA. I wrote the first draft of this post after I saw the pictures of angry white men with Nazi flags and torches. I wrote the end version after I saw the pictures from the terror attacks in Barcelona. This is not only about Charlottesville. It is about every act that is ruled by hatred. And about my way to deal with it without hating back.

I Can't Believe It.

I am sitting on my bed, staring at the pictures. I can’t believe what I see – they are marching again, in the country that calls itself „The Land of the Free“. Neo-Nazis are marching in Charlottesville and they do it in full staffage, torches and flags and gestures and all. They don’t even cover their face, so right they feel. So sure.

I realize how my energy is drained immediately by the pictures. Oh no, I talk to myself, I won’t give them power over me. I won’t allow them to drain me. Here and now, I decide to stay in my full personal power, no matter what they do.

That’s actually a big thing for me. Aggression triggers my pain body, as it does for many people who had traumatic experiences in their past. For decades the slightest breeze of aggression made me freeze. But it also shaped my point of view on what I want and what I don’t want in the world. I am crystal clear about that today.

I don’t want to live in a world that is ruled by hate. I don’t want to live in a world that is ruled by fear about other people’s hate either. I don’t want to be silent. I am born in a country where the collective silence contributed to one of the biggest human catastrophes in human history.

I don’t want to hate back. It is fuel on their rage and it doesn’t work anyway. What does a group do when it gets attacked from the outside? It becomes stronger. That is the last thing I want.

What DO I want then? I want to contribute to something else. Something better. Even if I don’t know what that is right now.

What else can I do, when freezing and hating back are not an option? For a moment I am blank. It just feels hopeless and I feel my resistance coming up. I have done enough Byron Katie work to know that fighting against what is makes it worse. I want to make it better, not worse.

I ask myself: What would Byron Katie do? What would Mahatma Gandhi do? Buddha? Jesus?

Sitting with these questions, after a while I got my answer clearly in my head: Hold the vision. What vision? I ask. The vision of love, it comes back.

Now I know what I can do.

My View As A Shaman

As I perceive it, we as humans are connected to our source of power, and we are constantly filled by these powers, maybe like a system of water pipes would fill a basin. These „pipe lines“ can be clear and widely open so a lot of energy can reach us and we flourish in this area of life.

On the other side, these pipe lines can be close and clogged, then only a little bit of energy comes through. The more clogged a pipe line is, the more troubles are usually present in the connected areas of life.

The capability to receive and create love is one of these pipelines, the capability to receive and create an open mind another. People who are run by hatred against others usually have very clogged pipelines in both areas.

Speaking in terms of energy: They carry very low frequencies in Mind and Love.

And then it hits me: Even when the love frequencies are very low, they still must be there. Or back to the pipes picture: Even when the pipe is nearly clogged, a tiny little bit of love energy comes through. It has to be, otherwise the person wouldn’t be alive. Which means that a tiny bit of love must be in everyone. Even if it is small as a drop.

What I Can Do

Energy follows attention and what gets attention grows. So I pick the first guy I see on the picture and I start talking to this tiny piece of love that I know is inside of him. „Love“, I say „I know that you are there. I believe in your ability to grow.“

From my work as a Shaman I know that this gets energies in motion but I also know that it sometimes takes a while. So I keep talking to this tiny piece of love, until I feel something like a deeper connection.

Once the connection is there, I am suddenly able to see a vision of this man as a happy and loving person. I get a bit excited now and the excitement grows when I realize that my power strongly flows back into my body. I am onto something here.

For the next half an hour I pick up all the people I can see on the pictures and I keep talking to their tiny love. Then I do the same for the neighborhood, then for the whole city.

Later on I will do it for the nation as well.

And I will keep doing it whenever I feel that my energies become weak around this topic again.

Now I am sure: This is my third way despite the road of anger and hate or the one of freezing silence. This is the way I can be the change I want to see in the world.

We Always Have A Choice

I am not an activist, I am a shaman. My way to interact with the world is by interacting with energies. Love is an energy and it is present in everyone. To different degrees of course, but nevertheless it is there.

When I decide to speak to this energy even when I face aggression and rage, it will make an effect, it will make a change.

It has already done for me as I don’t feel powerless anymore. Quite the contrary in fact. After talking to their tiny love, I feel a deep rooted strength inside of me, with a sense of being truly unshakable. This is EXACTLY how I want to feel when I face aggressive people.

From a place of unshakability, a lot more is possible.

I Chose Finding Love

When people touch us in our pain points, and these angry people do so on many different levels – personally and collectively – we sometimes forget that we always have a choice.

We can allow them to dictate the rules by responding in the way they want us to do, with hatred and rage or freeze and fear. In both cases, we hand our power over to them.

Or we can make our own rules, based on what is truly important for us, and we can act from there.

It depends on what world we want to live in.

We are free to choose.

I don't choose hate. I don't choose fear. I choose finding love.

And you?


Simone Wiedenhöft
About The Author

Simone Wiedenhöft is a bridge between the worlds. She was an academic psychologist once, turned into a Shaman then. Now she is breathing union of both, living the often beautiful and sometimes challenging dance of intuition and intellect in everyday life. She loves to experience life from a place of freedom, love and joy, and she loves to empower and encourage others to do the same – in her working, in her speaking, in her wholehearted being.

She lives in Germany at the moment. Her heart belongs to the world.

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