“In a world where death is the hunter , my friend , there’s no time for regrets or doubts. There is only time for decisions “
Carlos Castaneda , Journey to Ixtlan
Shamanic and spiritual quotes
The Digital art that goes together with this article is a tribute at once to the Wolf Medicine and to the Jackal God Anubis, guardian of the gates of the underworld who carried the souls of the deaths to appear in front of the Gods.
In shamanism, death is only a doorway. It’s a change of state and place for consciousness and the moment between death and birth, the incarnation, should be an opportunity for a path of elevation and evolution. The duty of the shaman, as was the duty of the Egyptian magicians for thousands of years, is to raise his consciousness up to the divine to be able to enter death consciously. To reborn in shamanism also implies to ” die” during his life time on earth. As in many spiritualities , there is always something to kill in oneself to rise and elevate the consciousness to the divine and its laws. This “thing” that one has to “kill” or better said to let go, is the “human shape” or the Ego. This concept of dying to be able to reborn to the divine is also found in the New Testament and applies both for shamans and christians.
The incarnation, life , the entry of consciousness into the matter and the material state is always for the spiritual being a unique opportunity that must be seized. The shaman never forgets incarnation is a privilege. To him each new breathing is a miracle and an opportunity to feel and experience gratitude for the beam of circumstances, the fate , his ancestors, the gods that made his incarnation possible and for everything that made possible for his eternal consciouscness to incarnate on a body and on this earth for a specific achievement.
Following this beliefs, for the mystic, the Saint, the shaman or for any being sincerely involved into a spiritual journey, death is an important milestone. We here alive to save others and to help the world, and death reminds us the urgency to make our path, a path of learning, gifting and constant elevation. In this sense, Death is always an ally, a counselor who is guiding the spiritual being and enlighting his life at each moment. The sames goes in all highest spiritual and mystical practices across the board and we retrieve it in all shamanic practices but also in Zen Buddhism. Taisen Deshimaru (a japanese zen master famous in Europe) often told to his neophyte disciples, should he scare some of them doing so “zazen ( sitting meditation ) is like sitting in his coffin.”
The result of this is that on the spiritual journey, death is not an abstract idea or a scary one, it is more a measure of time to help us evolve along the way and make us understand there is no time to lose. In this sense, it is a light on the road and i can’t resist to quote again here this wonderful sentence from Castaneda that says it all .
“For me the world is weird because it is stupendous, awesome, mysterious, unfathomable; my interest has been to convince you that you must assume responsibility for being here, in this marvelous world, in this marvelous desert, in this marvelous time. I want to convince you that you must learn to make every act count, since you are going to be here for only a short while, in fact, too short for witnessing all the marvels of it.”
Don juan’s teachings
From Carlos Castaneda , Journey to Ixtlan
A Quote on Shamanism and spirituality
Being on a spiritual path or not , there is no doubt that the constant and positive awareness about death is something we have to learn to live with without fear. It might help some of us at some point to project in the future at our last moment and to find out if we would be ready to die in the next incoming minutes. If we still have important things to solve and to fix before that, we will feel them in our heart and what pops can then be used as a call to figure out what we are missing in our current path and to start working on it. We all have somehow somewhere in our deep self, beyond the fake ambitions society is pretending us to fullfill for a really happy life, the feeling that we have came and incarnate on earth for a special reason. Death has indeed this capacity to teach us if we’re on the right path or if there are things that we have to change in our lives.
Panchito , the wonderful Spanish shaman was saying something like, ” We came here for a reason , all we need to do is to remind ourselves this reason and once we remember it , we should just stick to it . “
Man is a social being, born into this world in a middle of a community called humanity, and in a middle of an ocean we call “life”, one among billions of living beings. We are born into this world with a mission, with the responsibility to remember it and then once we know it, to carry it. This mission is always having to deal with this large community of living beings we are part of and carries a responsibility among them. Every moment counts. How are we going to make that each day makes sense for ourself as for others? This is the ultimate challenge that life, this moment between birth and death, has been placing in our hands .
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We wish you a day full of joy, love and meanings in accordance with your deepest truth .
Fred
yourenergymedicine.com