My Shamanic Journey
To be clear I don’t mean Shamanic Journeying, but my personal shamanic journey that led me to become a Shamanic Healer.
I had suffered for nearly my whole life from a mild depression that came and went. Years ago, when my boyfriend bailed on our engagement, my doctor put me on anti-depressant medication that numbed my emotions and made me feel not fully alive. And I had been in weekly therapy of all shapes and forms since I was 25 years old, but had gained almost no results.
My Shamanic Journey Begins
In 2000 I found an article that talked about depression and how shamanic healing could help it. I was feeling so bad that I was willing to try anything! When I called for an appointment, the woman explained…
“I needed a Soul Retrieval Session”
A what?
Even though I was delighted with meditation, soul retrieval was still too much for my psychologically-oriented mind to believe. But out of intellectual curiosity and desperation for anything that would heal my depression and get rid of the medication, I went to the session.
My First Shamanic Healing
That wonderful spiritual practitioner brought back three pieces of my soul and explained how these had separated at different points in my childhood and later life. When I stood up after the session, I felt ten feet tall! I believed I was truly looking down on her from a great height!
I started regular sessions with her that helped heal some of the major traumas of my life, including the rape. One day her guides told her I needed to do a certain ritual. Thankfully, a friend had come with me so she could drive afterward and it’s a good thing because I got so dizzy I couldn’t walk. But once that effect passed, I could no longer remember the face of the man who had raped me. To this day, I am healed of that trauma that had controlled such a big part of my psyche.
Needless to say, I no longer needed the anti-depressant.
I was hooked!
This was so much better than all the years of psychoanalysis I’d been through. I wanted to learn this and help others!
I began to study intensively with this woman and other shamans throughout the next years. These studies touched me deeply and added to my growing knowledge of the spirit world.
Inevitably, the shamanic knowledge was integrated into my practice. I felt it was a useful tool that would help my clients as much as it helped me.
Into Higher Dimensions
In 2006 a Panamanian shaman came to the San Francisco Bay Area. I was excited to have a session with her.
But during the session, this tiny woman suddenly began yelling at me and pulling my hair! “You need to do what God put you here to do! Nothing is going to work in your life because you are not listening to what God is telling you! He put you here to heal people and you’re not listening!”
Ouch! I was shocked!
After a second intense session the next day, she came out to sit with me while I drank a little tea. Now she was just a nice woman. Kind and soft, talking in a normal voice. “Maria, you really need to do this work full-time” she urged, “and there’s a training coming up that you should attend.”
“Oh no,” I said, “I’m not ready for that.”
Divine Intervention
“The shaman will tap into your energy and tell you if you’re ready.” Hmmm…I agreed to go to the two-week Divine Intervention ‘boot camp’ training with Brook Still in Los Angeles in 2006.
I had already trained to do astral journeying and found it surprisingly easy to learn. So when I went on this initiation for Mayan shamanism, leaving the body wasn’t anything new for me. But the shaman also saw that my intellectual mind was so trained and dominant, I could not let go of it. And it was an obstacle to working with spirit.
Night after night the shaman didn’t let my mind rest. Even after many hours of training that lasted all day and often into the night, she appeared to me throughout the nights so that I couldn’t sleep deeply. She tapped into traumas and pain that I had never told her about. I wept and wept from exhaustion and the release of emotions that I’d blocked despite years of therapy.
Days later I finally came out on the other side of this purging and re-learning with new clarity and understanding—not just of my own issues, but of the way to work with Spiritual Source to help other people.
The shaman said one of her teachers—Derek O’Neill, a therapist and a healer from Ireland—was coming and I should attend his workshop. She warned that this involved a much higher level than I’d experienced so far, even during the two grueling weeks I’d been with her.
When Derek arrived he brought with him a light that radiated from his face.
In his wide-ranging lectures, he talked about the predominant theme he felt in the group, anything from relationships to money. Afterward, we meditated.
The first day I noticed that there were many Spanish speakers like me but none of his books or material was in Spanish. So I offered him to translate his work. His immense blue eyes so full of kindness looked at me and seemed to go right inside of me. The next thing I knew I was outside, sitting next to the fountain. A friend was sitting next to me, talking.
“What? Oh my God, how did I get here? I was just inside talking with Derek!” My friend, who was more advanced than I, laughed. “Yep, well, that’s how it is to talk with an avatar like Derek.”
Masters and Spirit Guides
I was still a skeptical when I began having my first experiences that weekend with the ascended Masters. They appeared right in front of me, talking to me and giving me valuable information. All weekend they came. All weekend I became increasingly convinced of the power that comes from tapping into higher dimensions and that I needed to go deeper into the teachings.
That year I went for more intensive training with Derek O’Neill in Ireland. For ten long days and nights, the work was profound and healing. I still had lingering doubts but I also had many, many experiences that my intellectual mind could not deny. I was initiated as a teacher into Rising Star.
Shamanic Journey To Shamanic Healing
My private healing practice — now the Shamanic Healing Center in the San Francisco Bay Area, really benefited from these experiences. I then broadened my services offered to include both local and long-distance healing.
Today, I am grateful to have many years of psychological practice and experience to combine with the wisdom of the Masters and the spiritual guides. Fortunately, I no longer have to maintain a hard line between psychology and spirituality.
(Begin Now) You Can Heal Too!
I healed from childhood and war traumas, depression, rape, homelessness, and dislocation because of the generous and infinitely loving help of the Masters and Spirit guides.
You can heal, too – there is no need for you to suffer alone any longer. The Masters and Spirit guides await you, to help you create the life you dream of.
Let’s explore your soul-world together.
With love,
~ Maria
