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I was raised with a lot of permission to explore spiritual avenues. My experiences have involved many different types of symbols from many different cosmologies. My takeaway is that whatever I'm resonating with in the present will determine what form my experiences will take.
I have until recently only ever practiced in solitude. It was a conscious decision, because I was determined to have the utmost authenticity while discovering/creating my path, although it became clear that I feared having a teacher programming my reality for me. I got over it, but don't regret insisting that my teachers be Spirit-ed and serendipitous for the majority of my life.
I resonate with places quite a lot. An awareness of energy was something my family almost took for granted, in that they would acknowledge vibrational patterns even when their senses weren’t necessarily doing so. This subtle sense of energy would permeate my life and influence what color shirt I would wear, which book I would pick up at the library, or who I would talk to.
I always gravitated toward pain. The desire for healing was strong in me. My infantile attempts were to actually be the salve that would ease the grievous injuries of those around me; I tore myself asunder in the vain attempt to be a healer. It started during infancy and it almost killed me. My own self-inflicted wound. It was in my hands.
I've slipped into altered states of consciousness easily and fearlessly ever since I can remember. I draw maps of sensation in my body while on these excursions which enables me to reconnect to the state without trouble - usually. It is because of this that I suspect that I resonate with shamanism most readily.
I find shamanism to be the most rewarding of paths for me, because it is so fundamentally human by my reckoning. That isn’t to suggest that it is somehow limited in scope, no, rather it is a most effective interface with the vastness to which we are intimately related. And it’s really fun. Don’t get me wrong, I exalt amusement as a sensation of the highest order.
This is all to say that I chose shamanism as much as it chose me. Perhaps it is better to say that it suggested itself to me through so many channels I would have to be severely dissociated to ignore its voices. Even so, I have resisted the call multiple times and it's been excruciating.
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