In modern spiritual circles, the self often gets a bad rap, and yet, all the while it’s being dismissed and denied, it’s busy running the show.

To clarify, when I say modern spiritual circles, I am talking of forms of spirituality that are 30-50 years old and based in non-duality or oneness in some way, rather than Eastern traditions in which students are devoted to a master, happening within a context in which a cosmology, community, concepts of consciousness, and practices have been baked in for aeons.

This post is one I needed 12 years ago, but then maybe if I had I would have dismissed it, and maybe just upon seeing the title…

• Dismissed it as woo woo nonsense… “shamanic”, “spiritual”, please. Why not throw “astrologist” in for good measure?

Healing isn’t fashionable, it’s not impressive, it’s certainly not cool. It’s no wonder we dress it up in other terms or more often, attempt to escape the need for it altogether, via…

After a long deep inhalation of rest and play in Sicily, I’m back at work today; these are some of the ways I’m breathing in this week…

A massage, an astrology reading, taking Wednesday afternoon off for my soul to drift and dream, a psychodynamic therapy session, and time spent with my tree.

This is what my boss said to me back in my corporate days when I asked him what he thought of the run through of the complex presentation about our digital strategy that I was intending to take to the board.

For all my brains, experience and effort, the thing that stood out to him was my bosom.

Jonathan and I have taught for many years that the greatest gifts are found in our deepest wounds… it’s the underlying principle that our work in our year-long Medicine crucible of guiding people to uncover their soul’s purpose and become their unique medicine is based upon.

“The magic you are looking for is in the work you are avoiding” Dipen Parmar ✨

As much as this is a powerful (and deservedly much shared) quote, if we read ‘magic’ as wealth, success, status, or the dream relationship, and if we read ‘work’ and we think “Perhaps this means I need to hustle harder, or take the leap and hire that coach promising prosperity, or start sharing myself on social media in a way that terrifies me.”… It could be useful to go deeper.

(Even and especially if you dismiss the notion of wounds OR feel you’ve already healed)

If you’re a coach, therapist, or practitioner of transformative, healing or spiritual work and…

🩸Despite thinking you’ve already escaped the rat race and are doing your soul work (certainly compared to friends and family, or your past self), you’re still feeling constrained by someone else’s ideas of how to do what you do… maybe your industry’s, coach’s, teacher’s, parents’, or culture’s.

If you dare to follow a winding path through an ancient forest that is overflowing with fae folk if you know how to see them, you will come to a clearing in which there’s an oak door carved with symbols that are strangely familiar though you haven’t seen them before in this life... The door is the enchanted portal to Medicine ‘24, and unseen hands have flung it open.

One of my past teachers once shared a story (which I’ve probably misremembered to some extent - but that’s the way of stories and dreams and how they work through us) of a group of westerners in ceremony with an indigenous shaman, at the end of their time together, the group were bright-eyed, feeling full of power and love, and ready to make a big difference.

This is not something I ever intended to write - the wounded healer is the archetype I’ve spent a lifetime attempting to deny, even just accepting the role of healer has been an excruciating journey, requiring me to let go of everything I had clung to for security and to open to everything I had pushed away for sanity’s sake.

The lifelong struggles with being neurodivergent in a modern world that doesn’t understand or welcome differences, the trauma, the scars, the chronic facial pain, the terrifying hallucinations, the shamanic sickness… all of these and more, I’ve made my peace with and received the precious gifts held there.

(The shadow of shadow work)

As the popularity of shadow work is growing, its own shadow is arising along with it.

But before I say more about that, I’ll share first how deeply I celebrate and support the increasing popularity of shadow work, especially deep inner child work, and especially when done from sovereignty. Sovereign shadow work is a foundational aspect of the work we do with our students and is something I am delighted to see is catching on and being woven into many different forms of healing and change-work.

Over the past decade of deep healing work, I’ve kept different photos of my childhood self at different ages on my altar and my desk… Keeping in my awareness what I had avoided looking at through pain and shame.

I was talking to precious WTW alumni Nicole Barton this morning, she was sharing with me how much is transforming in her life since the shamanic healing she had with me two months ago, and saying that amongst other changes, she was being unexpectedly called back to activities she once loved, such as horse-riding, yoga and piano.

(A part 2 and a balance of sorts to my last post about pedestalisation and demonisation.)

In many forms of spiritual and sovereignty work, there’s teachings about victim consciousness, sometimes it’s specifically spoken about this way and sometimes using other terms.

This is an archetypal pattern that we can experience when a teacher or leader is perceived to fall from grace in some way and we feel disappointment, disavowal or dismay.

When we feel these things, we are likely moving from one end of the shadow pole to another… From projecting perfect master to total disaster.

(An oversimplification of a deep contemplation we’ve been in)

As I shared on the latest Waking The Wild Show episode (coming out soon), Jonathan and I have come back from our August break with a more intentional focus for the show going forward.

There’s been a rupture rumbling beneath the celebrations and fresh beginnings… It's big but not bad - though it might seduce one to see it that way - it’s simply life twisting and turning the wheel of change, like it always does.

One of the portals into self-illumination, which is one of the seven elements of the work of Waking The Wild, is making conscious ancestral (which is really archetypal) patterns and cycles.