Paradox: Prayer (consciousness shifting on purpose) doesn't work yet it helps!

Is there any empirical evidence that prayer actually works?

Obviously (watch or read the news) shamanizing or consciousness shifting on purpose or prayer by any other method doesn't produce measurable empirical or experimental ordinary reality results. In every level of ordinary reality, sub-atomic to cosmic, there are always noticeable and hidden changes for the better and for the worse unfolding, all at once. When I choose where to focus attention and what to envision I do not pin my hopes on preventing or undoing personal or global disasters and catastrophes.

I don't want to pin my hopes down on any prayer result that could be set in stone, but I do want to experience new dreams of happier, funner shapes of universal life birthing into being in our world as new nows. Shamanic experiencing of consciousness and life shifts toward better and best change me, the shamanizer, in visible and invisible ways, and probably - I would say certainly but admit I don't know - do not directly keep 'bad things' from happening to 'good or bad (in or out of 'balance' or 'grace') people(s) or places, according to the laws of nature and the universe.

But those waves within me of intentional incremental to amazing improvement ripple out into the world, mysteriously, beyond the arm's length of either the right hand or the left hand giving or taking away, way beyond simply shifting 'bad things' from here to there, or from now until later. I do not have to know or understand the details of if and when or how these momentary micro-changes (from sub-atomic through molecular through personal through community through planetary levels) towards FUN restoration bring happier macro-effects through the natural yet weird ways of this re-creative living chaos we embody and inhabit here now.

Shamanizing is connecting my self through ecstatic dreaming and imagining around beings, places, situations, and events as they trouble or challenge and draw attention, to potentials and possibilities for beauty, harmony, and happiness already present in the biggest picture available to me in any given moment. Shamanizing also interconnects me - and ALL through me - to the powers of serendipity, paradox, and mystery, as long as I refrain from excessive definition and limiting expectation.

I keep shamanic shifting because it brings me fun. And childishly I choose to keep on supposing my fun is also (for sure) that much more FUN shifting around everywhere, not only harmless but help-full overall - SOME HOW(S).

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Maze production by computer with human imput

Maze Design



Labyrinths celebrate orderly progress but mazes confound through complexity. As an act of shamanic prayer I hold a vision of the labyrinth before me while walking the grid of my city's streets and contemplating and offering to the Spirits of Change for the better the amazing maze of challenges faced by beings all around the planet.

~ ECP

Image Credit: Ferenc Ungor

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Shamanic shifting and supportive counseling

Shamanic Shift Center is for shamanic teaching and shamanizing. The the main purpose of shamanic shifting is world transformation towards better and best though direct individual and circle interconnecting to life Spirit and Spirits. Individual healing through shamanic ways heals the whole universe but the effective therapies are given by Spirit and Spirits, not the shamanic counselor or circle members or circle leader.

In practicing shamanic ways one can focus upon self-change towards better around some personal issue in order to transform the world towards better around that same issue or a related topic or theme. But focusing first and last upon shifting a global trouble towards better and best makes it easier to stay on purpose and blaze new neurochemical, emotional, and thought pathways around unhealthy, unhelpful habits of gut, heart and mind, and write new soul-stories all at once, instead of falling back into more (same-old or similar-old) explicit, emotion-charged rehashing of generations-old deeply ingrained life patterns and the consequences of continuing to indulge those no longer helpful habits - further perpetuation.

To keep shamanizing instead of awfulizing, develop the new healthy habit of talking to Spirit and Spirits on your shamanic journey whenever the urge to speak all over again of painful events and harmful patterns arises in your everyday life. While shamanic journeying, or as you connect with Spirit and Spirits by some other shamanic method, talk to your Spirit helpers about your troubles, while you keep on shamanizing within your overall intention for global healing, beginning with you and branching all ways to every being ever interconnected to your pain, through all levels, orders, and dimensions of the past, the present, and the future.

Then bring back the spiritual remedies you receive - the images, symbols, songs, dances, new stories, or visionary artworks given by Spirit and Spirits during your shamanizing - and practice and live these remedies relentlessly. Acknowledge respectfully all forms in your life but remember to start shamanic shifting everything towards better and best, moment to moment, through every shamanic way you know.

I find it easier to shamanize around global challenges in order to continue healing myself instead of the other way around. I know that whoever or whatever draws my attention in this ordinary reality is connected to energy-patterns resonating within me, calling out for healing and transforming through many worldly beings, places, events, and situations before me, near and far. Shamanizing for universal healing and then inward toward my own healing shifts my attention from irksome urges and urgent cravings for retelling some old, sad stories, yet again.

Whether focusing upon self-healing and shamanizing outward or focusing upon world transformation and shamanizing inward, always begin your shamanic shifting by connecting with Spirit and Spirits in the lower and upper spiritual realms of benevolence, blessing, potential, and possibility. To avoid confusing or distressing shamanic experiences, resist (with spirit-power) any temptations to engage middleworld spirits or souls right away, especially souls or soul-fragments of particular beings from your ordinary reality life, especially any appearances of your ordinary reality villains or heros.

It is every shamanizer's duty to do the best to receive bring back healing and transforming remedies from Spirit and Spirits, not horror stories of unexpected 'bad trips' from painful perturbing encounters with uncrossed-over spiritual energies, such as what some would call 'ghosts' or other emotional or mental remnants of suffering beings. If you are being called truly by Spirit and Spirits to help such suffering beings in the middleworlds towards wholeness, still begin in the lower and upper spiritual realms and heal and transform from non-ordinary states and places of re-unity before or venturing anywhere else.

Always shamanize in spiritual companionship with your shamanic helpers no matter where your shamanic journeying or dreaming takes you. Even if you are called to shamanize with Trickster, decide to be guided by Spirit and Spirits rather than your attention-seeking ego.

Between shamanic journeys you can journal explicit descriptions of painful sickening events and situations if you still feel compelled to talk about these matters over again. Pour it all out onto the pages, again and again, in many entertaining versions, from many differing perspectives, not 'censoring' or sugar-coating anything. Then periodically (or finally) bring your journal to Spirit and Spirits for shamanic shifting everything in it towards better and best. And, as you are guided by Spirit and Spirits, develop a powerful healing, transforming journal-ritual to complement shamanic journeying (or any other shamanic methods you use).

Some people - even in addition to journaling and spiritual practicing - feel a stronger need to talk longer to other human beings about their painful or shocking memories. Support groups come together to fulfill this need in a healthy way. This is a very different process from shamanizing in circle.

In shamanic shifting Spirit (as Spirits) gives the support and the psychotherapy. A shamanizer develops the ability to re-creatively reconnect all painful or ailing energy-flow patterns and forms directly to Spirit and the Spirits for healing. When spiritual healing happens in non-ordinary reality these shamanic shifts can be brought back, storied, and danced to life as new, healthier ordinary realities.

Roadscrossing S.O.U.L. Clinic was created to offer more conventional supportive counseling, non-sectarian ministerial counseling, information and referral to community services, advocacy, and learning holistic healthy ways of self-help and self-change around problems. In supportive counseling one does talk for longer whiles about life troubles and challenges to hear and notice patterns that might be reframed gradually (and stretched into something more flexible).

Supportive counseling is also for receiving practical solution-suggestions and developing more effective coping strategies for whatever ails, sometimes through reading and discussing self-help or complementary healing books and applying one or more of those methods. In supportive counseling it is ok to tell the counselor stories of unresolved painful patterns and hurtful events one is still dwelling in, that seem to be restricting life's going forward successfully in the present.

A supportive counselor receives sad stories and puts them aside or reflects them back in a softer light, from a different perspective, possibly re-told a slightly different way. In supportive counseling the talking of stories is for emotional and mental safety-valve releasing or for facilitating more gradual, incremental changes.

Supportive counseling is far less challenging than shamanic shifting but can also help someone stuck in sad stories to discover and grasp some happier and deeper personal and universal meanings for past and current life experiences and grow in awareness and acceptance of 'what is' today. Like shamanic shifting, supportive counseling is eclectic, drawing from many sources and approaches and it may (or may not) develop into more dynamic self-help and self-change coaching.

Roadscrossing was developed by Companions Circle especially for uninsured individuals and families who need and want supportive and/or holistic counseling or help accessing other available appropriate community services. Roadscrossing is also for some who are seeking a safe space to address and resolve religious or spiritual issues in a non-sectarian environment.

Roadscrossing can serve as a place for 12-Steppers to work spiritual steps. And Roadscrossing can be a confidential refuge for stressed-out or troubled clergy of any religion or denomination, beyond the reach of institutional religious authorities (except for the legal requirement to report child abuse).

Companions Circle opened Shamanic Shift Center and Roadscrossing S.O.U.L. Clinic to take two very different approaches to healing on purpose. I wrote this post to clarify some of the main differences between the two.

~ ECP

Circling at a distance - rocks, plants, animals, and all

Amazing! Last night, since Friday's formal ordinary reality circle is on break this month, eight human beings I know (possibly more, known and unknown) circled around in Spirit with the Spirits at our locations, over nearer and farther distances, along with many mineral, plant, and animal realm representatives. We were journeying for mission renewal, as well as inspiration and encouragement around this intention.

Message to me from Spirit and Spirits: Circling around over distances is not only a valid way to gather but one of the best ways, whether through higher-tech or lower-tech means.

The 7PM Friday night circle will return to ordinary reality in June. Some of the circles will be teaching and discussion circles, still offered as shamanic shifting for world transformation towards better and best. Anyone attending in-person regularly over a 2 to 3 year period will be able to receive instruction - ultimately from Spirit and Spirits though introduced by Elizabeth - on most of the topics, methods, and techniques relating to contemporary shamanic ways treated in the Foundation for Shamanic Studies (FSS) programs.

There will be an application and interview process for anyone wishing to attend the Friday circle regularly as the core of an official apprenticeship in contemporary shamanics. Those who complete a 2 to 3 year apprenticeship as well as qualified experienced contemporary shamanic practitioners who have already complete 2 to 3 or more years of experiential shamanic education may seek formal ordaination as a shamanic minister through Companions Circle Church through a similar application and interview process (including a background check and our Board of Directors vote of approval).

The Shamanic Shift Center Friday night shamanic circle will still be open to all contemporary shamanizers - and shamanic innovators. Pre-registering by calling or emailing ahead will be required.

Occasionally there will be Fridays when the circle will not meet in ordinary reality while still gathering through non-ordinary reality and cyberspace, because of Elizabeth's ordinary reality work schedules (for funding for keeping Companions Circle and Shamanic Shift Center open) - i.e. property management, writing and editing, and marriage (and other ceremony) officiating. Some weeks the circle may gather at other spactime coordinates.

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Greetings to Shamanic Shift Center from Schuschu

We are a shamanic online and reallive community in german spoken Europe, located in Switzerland.

In our drumcircles we either drum locally together or per videotelefone over whole Europe.
In our Forum we discuss shamanic travels in a familiar way.
We use the platform also as a shop for the gifts, that our members create, such as drums, rattles, dreamcatchers and more.
We are a nonprofit organisation.

~ Sonja and Wanderer

Website: http://schuschu.org/ - Schuschu Shamanismus

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Wow! Videotelephone would be a fun way for our cyber-reality circle to gather on Fridays! So far our cyberspace circle companions are all living lower-tech lives so when we circle around across distances we imagine the pictures.

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Shamanic Shift Center's shifts continue...

Spring renewing: In order to reorganize and renew Shamanic Shift Center's and Companions Circle's mission, the Friday night Shamanic Circle and the Green Rock Club conversation circle will not meet in ordinary reality until further notice. The Shamanic Circle of individuals who always meet through cyber- and non-ordinary realities will continue. I will be available by appointment for marriage officiating and other ceremonies, shamanic consulting and supportive counseling, and other ministerial services.

I am asking assistance and guidance from the "Shamantic!" Spirit Team for re-focusing the ordinary reality Friday night Shamanic Circle upon world transformation towards new and better dreams, dances, and shapes (rather than personal healing of past trauma) through contemporary - innovated and adapted - shamanic methods and techniques (rather than traditional or religious shamanic practices). It may turn out that our original circles and individuals, separated for the last few to several years by ordinary distances, who have circled around beyond spacetime boundaries all these whiles, will end up being the circle, gathering in form only occasionally. But at this moment I do not know.

The Friday night Shamanic Circle will probably resume in June or soon after. The Thursday night discussions will probably be discontinued or else combined with the Friday circle somehow.

I have left our announcements up around the web for now because I am pretty sure they all point to our Events and Updates site and request pre-registering through a phone call or email. This way, as a part of re-organizing, I can hear from any contemporary shamanizing folks around here who are interested in regularly attending a shamanic circle for reality shifting and FUN restoration (and along these wavelengths) on Milwaukee's east side.

Shamanic Shift Center's circle has always been 'ad hoc' - an hour or so of sacred spacetime for two or three to shamanize around the most important prayer intentions of the moment. Our shamanizing joins all to one another and everything through the non-ordinary circle of circles, the ongoing and unceasing Universal Circling where new life flows and patterns can be caught up by us and brought back to this world in us and as us.

I am looking into even better ways to connect and interact through cyber-realities such as a forum that could be embedded on this site. Some of our blogging shamanizers will be concentrating as much as possible on this and other circle's blogs, I hear. So I shall see as many of you as possible in cyberspace and non-ordinary reality!

~ Elizabeth

Mystery of the Missing Shamanic Blogger Invitations

Weirdness! Recently three individuals requested invitation to join this blogspot and Blogger shows I have sent and re-sent those invitations. I do not know what has happened to prevent folks from receiving those Blogger emails with the join link. I sent test invitations to three other email addresses belonging to colleagues who agreed to help with this test and these arrived. (But these folks were only helping with the test, not joining this blog.)

There is no way to get through to Blogger directly about this possible glitch. Someone wrote in the Blogger Help forum that some invitations sent out were not received - but there was no reply to that post and I was not able to find any other solution suggestion. I will hold Trickster (partially) responsible...while chalking this up to other possible causes.

Possible causes: I know that service providers sometimes filter out email from certain places such that emails from those places just never arrive, even through no failure to deliver error gets back to the sender. So maybe that is what happened and alternative email addresses would receive invitations ok. Also, I remember that the limited capacity 'shamantic.org' email boxes used to fill up quickly then bounce or 'lose' emails before we forwarded them to gmail or yahoo accounts, so maybe that is a cause for this disconnection.

So: If you requested and did not receive an invitation to join this blog - I am truly sorry about that. The bloggers who participate so far are companions of our original circle(s) and we were hoping to expand. For now and for a while, however, we will just let that dream go.

My shifting dreams: I am giving less attention to shamanic practice - as such - these days and more attention to self-employment activities I can earn a living from. These activites are freelance writing on diverse topics (and some editing and researching); marriage, handfasting, union, and other ceremonial officiating; and property management gigs for leasing, painting, maintenance, and cleaning. In my understanding of new shamanics these all interconnect and harmonize and I live situation shamanization throughout the day anyway.

Let us celebrate April Shaman Fools day any day all year round!

Merry April (Shaman) Fools Day!

My re-creative shaman-foolish prank today is this decree I now pronounce: From now on anyone can celebrate April Fools Day any day and all year around. Some folks already observe their favorite holidays whenever they want. Let your shamanic fun restoration bring healing laughter, not unnecessary suffering. Give Trickster plenty of chances to act out fun and help prevent more worst case scenarios.

Let us shaman fools be and live the sudden punching of light windows into more dark corners. To shaman fools the darknesses of life contain just as much wondrous potential for beautiful good as the light. But poking open more windows and shafts into the infinite unlimited realms of Spirit and Spirits 'outside our boxes' will show off more creative possibilities within and beam many unexpected blessings into even the darkest shadow boxes in the world. Shadow boxes are another kind of sacred container to create and keep for the fun of it.

Have fun shadow boxing today and any day!
~ Chammy

Quoting from National Geographic News - April 1, 2008

Joseph Boskin, professor emeritus of American humor at Boston University, has offered his own interpretation of the holiday's roots—as a prank.

In 1983, Boskin told an Associated Press reporter that the idea came from Roman jesters during the time of Constantine I in the third and fourth centuries A.D.

As the story goes, jesters successfully petitioned the ruler to allow one of their elected members to be king for a day....

Humor and pranksters can offer society some much-needed perspective, he added.

"Good humorists are basically secular shamans—they both heckle society on one hand and heal it on the other."

Living with lava flowing

...as continuous attitude adjusting! Eruptions of anger seemed to be spewing noxious fumes all around me this morning - inside this office building and outside in the neighborhood. On another day I might feel dismay and discouragement at finding myself nearby and noticing these harsh, loud events and might even begin fantasizing about moving to the calmer countryside - before asking myself where these little to large life upsets were already resonating within me, and shamanizing over the elements and beings calling for help, while allowing teachings from Spirit and the Spirits to unfold.

But I had just finished reading some new stories about a neighborhood of folks who chose to build and choose to keep living near the active Hawaiian volcano Kilauea, who find their unpredicable volatile situations exhilarating, humbling, and freeing. So I was already receiving teachings from Spirit(s) and I understood that every moment I can choose to build and keep living here on Milwaukee's east side, and daily consider and celebrate all the present energy-flows glowing and venting through this city - from the raging to the laughing - as wild, beautiful, cosmic and exotic, yet local and mundane volcano activity! I spent the rest of the morning looking around here for more ordinary reality urban lava flows to appreciate in watchful wonder.

Photo Credit: Lava spills forth from Kilauea Volcano on Hawaii.
© Melissa Brandes

Holy day snowing blows a beautiful mess!

Severe Weather Advisory and Circle Cancellation: Please stay home tonight and circle within your own safe and sacred spacetime instead of traveling here for the Friday Night Shamanic Circle. What a beautiful mess is being created by the spirits of snow and wind outside our windows this Purim and Good Friday!

Let us shamanize successful traveling for any who must venture forth into these nature storms - private and commercial vehicle drivers, mass transit operators, airline crews and ground workers, and all passengers.