The Shamanic Path Becomes Real When We Practice

~Gwendolyn C. Natusch, B.S.Ed., M.Ed., MSW

There is a difference between being interested in a spiritual path and actually living one. We can read spiritual books, attend workshops, feel deeply connected to nature, and have moments that open us to something greater. All of these things can begin an awakening. But eventually every spiritual path asks something more of us: Will we enter into relationship with what we have discovered?

Shamanism is rooted in direct experience. It is not simply a collection of beliefs about Spirit, nature, healing, or unseen worlds. We learn by practicing. We journey. We listen. We ask. We receive. Over time, what was once an idea becomes something alive within our own lives.

I believe there are many people awakening today and many who feel drawn toward a spiritual path. What I have witnessed through nearly forty years of shamanic practice is that some sincere seekers never quite make the crossing into direct relationship with Spirit. They attend workshops, read beautiful books, gather teachings, and become familiar with spiritual ideas, yet the heart of the path sometimes remains just beyond reach.

The difference, I believe, is practice. Without practice, we can remain seekers indefinitely. We can learn about healing without entering deeply into our own healing. We can speak about Spirit without developing an intimate relationship with Spirit. Practice is where the path becomes active and where healing, creativity, growth, purpose, and greater self-understanding begin to reveal themselves.

One of the first initiations on any spiritual path is deceptively simple: we must make time for it. Not someday. Not only when we are in crisis. We choose a place in our lives where spiritual practice is allowed to live. The exact amount of time matters less than the commitment to return, although we also need enough spaciousness to move beyond the surface of ordinary consciousness, to become quiet, settle, and listen.

This is especially important in shamanism because we learn to shift consciousness. We have been trained to think, analyze, explain, and understand, but there are ways of knowing that cannot be reached through thinking alone. We bring awareness into the body, the breath, the present moment, silence, and listening.

In shamanism, one of our primary practices is journeying. We journey with intention, and something remarkable begins to happen: Spirit teaches us. Not only through books or teachers, but directly. We begin to develop our own relationship with helping spirits, Power Animals, teachers, ancestors, the Earth, and the unseen world.

The teachings become personal. They begin to address our wounds, relationships, gifts, fears, patterns, possibilities, and the mystery of why we are here. We begin to understand ourselves as spiritual beings living a human life on this wild, astonishing, painful, beautiful planet.

You do not have to make the practice complicated. Create sacred space. Sit down. Pick up your drum or play journey music. Set your intention and journey. When you return, write down what you experienced. Over time, these writings become a record of your own relationship with the Divine.

Return again and again. Choose a time that becomes your time with Spirit and protect it. Eventually the journey becomes a doorway you know how to enter. You learn how to quiet the mind, listen deeply, receive, and return.

When you meet a Power Animal or helping spirit, do not simply collect the experience and move on. Return. Ask questions. Listen. Spend time together. Build the relationship. Gradually you begin learning the language of Spirit, a language of images, feelings, animals, dreams, symbols, landscapes, synchronicities, silence, sensation, and sometimes words. At first this language may feel unfamiliar. Over time, you may realize it has been speaking to you throughout your entire life.

Make the commitment wherever you are right now. You do not have to feel enlightened or completely healed. You do not have to know where the path is leading. Begin where you are. The world does not simply need more people interested in spirituality. It needs people who are in relationship with the Earth, with Spirit, with one another, with the unseen world, and with their own souls.

Perhaps the Mystery we call God, Great Spirit, Divine Love, the Universe, or by countless other names has never been very far away. Perhaps the journey is not about finding something that has been absent but becoming quiet enough and present enough to recognize that we have been living inside the sacred all along.

Every time we return to the drum, the journey, prayer, ceremony, the Earth, or the quiet place where we listen, the relationship deepens. Eventually spiritual practice stops being something we occasionally do and begins changing the way we live.

Journey. Listen. Build the relationship.

Record what you receive. Integrate it.

Live it.

That is where the path becomes medicine.