The ancient Shaman played an important part in his or her tribe or clan. They were the teachers, healers, oracles, and guides of the people. They spoke with the voice of the animals, the natural world around them, and the voice of Spirit. They were a living link between the worlds, cycles of life, and the seasons and cycles of Nature.
People honored them for their wisdom, their understanding of all worlds, and their enhanced abilities to "know" and to "see" that which others could not.
We may think we choose our spiritual pathways but when we start to seek our own unique spiritual truth the path finds us. Those who choose the path of the Shaman have often had severe illnesses, limitations, or disabilities as children and have encountered a combination of strange events and/or hardships in our lives while growing up. These experiences of the wounded spiritual warrior taught us how to conquer and overcome our adversities. We know we are different and sometimes even feel like outcasts. We are often so sensitive to the people and energy around us that we feel like we're responsible for all-kind and the entire world.
As we grow older some of us learn to embrace and honor these sensitivities realizing that they are a gift of Spirit. The awakening may happen at anytime in one's life. Somehow we learn to use them on our own. Some of us are lucky enough to have mentors or teachers to help us. Sometimes even our enemies are our teachers because we learn from the strangest and most unique of circumstances.
Pay attention, stay grounded, use common sense, listen to your heart, and never stop learning all you can. For when you stop learning , you forget your reason here.. which is to learn to create our own reality. A Shaman learns that it is not another persons actions which are causing them pain or sorrow, but instead it is their reaction to the persons action. A Shaman may be a hermit and often needs time alone for self-healing and communion with Spirit. A Shaman is also in service to all-kind be it animal, mineral, plant or Spirit so they cannot be a hermit forever, but must serve when called upon to serve the community as leader, an elder, a healer, one who can speak the oracle, one who can teach, or is a wise sage.
The path of Shaman isn't an easy one and is not considered a religion because "We are on many different paths to the same source!" It is a way of life and the path is very private, spiritual, and a personal choice when one finally accepts the call.
The Medicine Wheel predates the stories of present day peoples. It is the story of the ancients. They came from the earth. . There was a time when we were all one, when we were all one race. In the evolution of our cultural context we became many peoples with many stories. But first, we were all one. We were not Indians or white men, we were simply human. The medicine wheel brings us back to the time where we can stand as one, where we were all connected. Then, there were not enough of us to be disconnected. We were one with the air, the animals, with the land. Before the stories were culturally embedded, there were no stories of separateness.
The Medicine Wheel is the way to reconnect to the ancient ways of being, to reconnect to a consciousness where we are the earth, we are the voice of the earth. Once, the animals were the voice of the earth. This is meaningful in our lives today because it helps us remember the essence of who we are. We are the essence of the earth. That is why this is so important. Many ancient Medicine Wheel sites predated the contemporary native peoples by thousands of years. Many of these sites predate modern stories and ways. They take us to our deep past when we were all one and listened to the voices of the living earth.
