[In this Part 3 of “Projections as Doorways for Healing,” I’ve decided to deviate from Bob’s story as begun in Part 2 and share a piece of my personal journey with projections, whose underlying theme is actually very similar to Bob’s.]

Within the psyche is a drive to become known.   In its desire to become known the psyche naturally projects that which is unknown onto people, objects and situations in the outer world in its attempt to bring into consciousness those hidden and unknown parts of ourselves. It is in this “becoming conscious” of what is “hidden” that we have the opportunity to heal the wounds at the core of our projections.

I recently found myself irritated by the constant and what I judged meaningless and trivial chatter of the people around me, people talking endlessly about this and that--things that in my mind they had no control over and quite frankly wasn’t any of their business. I wanted to shout “shut the … up. It’s none of your ……business. You don’t have any control over it. You’re incessant talking, complaining, pointing out what is wrong, what should have been, your conjectures about this and that, etc., etc., etc., is a reflection of the dissatisfaction and unhappiness in your own lives. If you would just take charge of your own life and happiness you won’t have to be so obsessed with everybody else’s.” And then it hit me. That was exactly what I was doing about them.

A strong emotional reaction to something that really doesn’t merit such a strong reaction is often a sign of a projection. Could it be that my irritation at all their “meaningless and trivial chatter” and my interpretation that it was “a reflection of their own dissatisfaction and unhappiness” and “not taking charge of their lives” was a reflection of some dissatisfaction and unhappiness in my own life, a fear that my life was meaningless and trivial, that I wasn’t living my life? Was I projecting? The short answer is “yes.”  However, to put the “yes” in context and to understand what I might be projecting in light of my current journey, I need to go back to July 2012.

In July 2012 I went to Peru with the Four Winds Society on an expedition called “Advanced Shamanic Initiations.” The trip was part of my work with the Four Winds where I am training in the energy medicine and healing practices of the shamans of the Andes. For me this trip was an outer manifestation of my inner commitment to this path, a way to immerse myself in this tradition and to work directly with the shamanic initiations and to strengthen my own medicine.  I arrive in Cusco two days prior to the beginning of the expedition to give myself some time to adjust to the altitude.  Before going to sleep on the night before I am to leave for the Sacred Valley, I opened my Mesa and meditated for the start of my journey.  That night I dream:

Pat is presenting a case to us at Integrative Psychotherapy at the Crossing. She states that she is having a client, a male, do associations quickly. The idea is that by having him associate quickly he will become overwhelmed and break down. She states “he has to recognize and carry his humility.”

I conclude that this journey into “Advanced Shamanic Initiations” is somehow about humility or my coming into my own humility. But before I continue to explore how my trip and this dream are related to the above projection, I need to take a second side trip.

In preparation for this article, I look through my journal on Penzu.com in search of entries made while in Peru that addressed my purpose for going to Peru. Not finding what I was looking for I “click” to “close out”” Penzu.com and there, to my surprise, on my screen appears a journal entry titled “Bobby McFerrin and Ancestral Memory.” Leaping out at me from the page is the following:

Bobby McFerrin, genius of improvisation and a genre-bending vocal magician and conductor known for singing “the territory between music, mystery, and spirit” reports that after a show he was doing in Paris, a woman came back stage and told him that she had just spent a year studying African languages that are extinct or near extinct and wanted to know how he knew those languages. Bobby reports that he didn’t know what she was talking about; that he just opened his mouth and sang whatever sounds came out, because to him that is a language. The lady said that she heard moments in the sounds that Bobby produced that were the African languages that she had been working on for the past year and she wanted to know how he knew them.

Bobby stated that this woman’s recognition that the sounds that he was producing through his vocal improvisations were from extinct or near extinct African languages started him thinking. He has concluded that we are embodied memories of our ancestors, that he has his father in him, his father in turn is a memory of his father and so on and so on.  Bobby wonders if he is accessing a memory when he sings and this is the only way he can access it; that his vocal improvisations are his way of getting to it. According to McFerrin, it is like an ancestral memory lives within him and he can access it through his music.  This reflection by Bobby McFerrin agrees with what the Inca shamans teach—that we all carry our ancestral past in our Luminous Energy Field and we can access it.

McFerrin’s explanation resonates with a place deep inside of me.  Upon receiving several of the Munay-Ki rites in Peru I have noticed that at times when I am doing energy work or when I am giving the these rites to someone I often get a strong feeling, a welling up from within me to speak sounds that some religious traditions might call “tongues.” Out of some space deep inside me come these sounds, utterances, a “language” if you will, which I then speak. Could it be the memory of some ancestral past, an ancient medicine man or medicine woman or healer? Or perhaps it is the language of the rite itself, its energy in vocal form that is accessed and expressed.

McFerrin talks about the importance of improvisation and not listening to the voices that say “you're not doing it right; you don't know enough, this isn't good enough, I'm not trained enough.” McFerrin emphasizes the importance of trusting yourself and being natural. He says that in order to be your best, you have to be your natural self. So to be my best is to be myself, to be the closest to myself as I can be. McFerrin goes on to say that the best way to be genuine is to be relaxed and to be yourself, be childlike, be the closest to your real self as you can be. So, relax, have no expectations, be yourself and let what comes out of you sing. . . (from an interview with Krista Tippett on NPR). 

Journal Entry 10/14/12

. . . Or in my case speak!

Continuing this current side trip, McFerrin’s statement “be yourself and let what comes out of you sing” takes me back to a morning in the early 1980s. This was during a time in my life of great soul-searching, questioning, and trying to come to some reconciliation with all the voices in me. I awaken early in the morning, just as dawn is breaking. I hear birds singing outside my bedroom window. I lay in bed thinking to myself, “birds don’t worry about whether their song is good or right or pretty or even wanted, they just sing their song. They just do what they are born to do.” I remember thinking “I just want do what I am born to do. I just want to sing my song.”  I fall back to sleep and have a dream. In the dream I see two beautiful rings in brilliant colors of red, yellow and blue, one within the other, spinning in the Universe. The feeling of this dream had a numinous quality that left me somehow changed, like I had been in the presence of something divine. Jung speaks of the numinosum as an effect that seizes the human subject, independent of his will that causes an alteration of consciousness with a force not unlike a religious experience.¹ The dream had such an effect on me that I felt compelled to paint it. See Figure 1. I called this painting “The Birth of the Self.”

 

Figure 1: The Birth of the Selfere

 

Are all these incidents--my expressed desire in the 1980s to “sing my song”, followed by the numinous dream of two rings spinning in the Universe, my coming across Bobby McFerrin’s teaching on improvisation and his thoughts on ancestral memory, to my interest in shamanic healing and energy medicine to my journey to Peru and my dream on humility—somehow related? And what, if anything, do they have to do with my projection onto the people around me that their incessant talking about what I considered trivial, unimportant and none of their business was due to “some dissatisfaction or unhappiness” in their lives? The answer to those questions leads me back to Peru and my journey to Pachatusan Mountain and the shamanic initiations.

The expedition “Advanced Shamanic Initiations” required hiking to several sacred sites of the Inca to create Despachos² and receive the Munay-Ki rites³. The journeys to the sacred sites required two, three and sometime four hours of hiking daily in the Andes at altitudes up to 12, 400 feet and beyond. I found the physical process alone quite demanding and overwhelming at times.  One of the purposes of this journey was to clear our Luminous Energy Fields (LEF)⁴ from the destructive energies of anger, bitterness, resentment, guilt, unforgiveness, blame, broken promises, regrets, and shame that we continued to carry so we were clear agents to receive the rites. As we hiked to these sites we reflected on our lives and identified those places where we continue to hold such anger, resentment, bitterness, guilt, etc. As we focused on these emotions and their associated situations, we placed our intentions on releasing these energies and blew them into coca leaves as a way to give them to the Earth and Spirit for healing and transformation. We completed six of these processes, each time examining our lives and identifying, owning, and releasing destructive energies, clearing out our luminous energy fields to be open channels to receive the rites.

At times the climb was so demanding that I found myself saying “I’ll let go of anything, anything just to get to the top, to get to the sacred site.” This feeling of “being overwhelmed”  and recalling “my associations” for those places in me where I continued to carry anger, guilt, shame, regret, etc. reminded me of my dream several days earlier where the analyst was overwhelming a man with associations so fast that he would “break down and recognize and carry his humility”. Had the mountain become my analyst, overwhelming me with such demands that I’d be willing to give up anything and everything to get to the destination.  And what was that destination? On the physical level it was getting to the actual sacred site, the huaca. But symbolically, it was the journey to the sacred in me, to my soul, my commitment to this medicine path and to strengthen my own medicine—my own medicine—medicine that would first heal me and then be a doorway for healing others. So I journeyed on, identifying those places of hurt, pain, anger, blame, unforgiveness, etc., blowing them into leaves and releasing them to the Earth and to Spirit. I then made my prayers for healing and placed them into each of the Despachos, receiving the various Munay-Ki rites alone the way. Finally we came to the last Despacho, the Ayni Despacho.

One of the major themes and purposes of this trip into Advanced Shamanic Initiations was about coming into and living in “Ayni.” As I came to understand the concept of “Ayni” I again recalled the dream I had the night before starting this journey and its admonition that the man in the dream “recognize and carry his own humility.”  “Living in Ayni” offers insight into what it might mean to “recognize and carry one’s own humility” and provides some meaning into my irritability toward the people around me at their incessant chattering.

The concept of Ayni is at the core of this energy medicine and shamanic practice. According to the Q’ero⁵, Ayni is living life in balance and in right relationship with the Earth and All that is. This relationship is based on a proactive belief that everything is connected, that we live in a sacred reciprocity with everything that is. To live in Ayni means living impeccably, walking your talk, keeping your promises, recognizing and respecting the sacredness of everything. Living in Ayni is a profound respect for life in every moment. It is recognizing your place in the scheme of things, living with the awareness that whatever you do affects the All. The word Ayni does not have an equivalent in other languages. It means “today for you, tomorrow for me.” Ayni is a form of private reciprocity with all things, an interdependence of taking turns at serving each other. It means that when we give, we receive, and likewise, when we receive, we give, automatically. It’s the energetic law of the cosmos. It means that if I take something from the earth, I give something back. It is consciousness of every act.

Munay-Ki is another concept of this energy medicine and shamanic tradition. Munay-Ki means “I love you. Be as thou art” and “I love you are you are.”  In other words, it is unconditional love. Love is the essential cohesive power that holds the universe in place. It is a high vibration that we all hunger for in a deep, essential way. Real love, true unconditional love is clean, unattached, unambiguous, expansive and liberating. It is founded on the recognition that there is no ‘other’, no ‘out there’, no “difference”, no “separation”, only “oneness”.

 Ayni is interwoven with Munay and vice versa. Ayni is the core “knowing” that we live suspended in a continuous sacred interchange with everything that is. To live in Ayni is to live consciously in a deep understanding that we cannot “take” without giving something of ourselves in exchange. And not just with our fellow humans but with everything else that interconnects in our lives. Everything else. When we breathe we are in Ayni, there is no inbreath without an outbreath. We flow through our lives surrounded by energies that move in and out of us. Our water, our food, our relationships, our work—all of these are steeped in exchange. To awaken to this is to become completely responsible. Conscious reciprocity means to be awake. Now and in every instant. That is humility. That is Ayni and the call of this path.

It seems to me that Ayni and Humility are closely related, even interchangeable. We can say then that humility is about living in balance with all that is; living in a sacred reciprocity, in a continuous interchange with everything that is; recognizing that there is no “other”, no “out there”, “no difference”, “no separation”, only “oneness.”  Humility is about finding and living my place in the scheme of things, being content with my gifts and my limitations, seeing others not as competitors, but as fellow travelers on the same path, with their gifts and limitations, wasting no time on envy, never being ashamed of who I am and never needing to inflate my importance.  It means taking joy in exercising the gifts that I have, rather than despairing over the ones that I don’t have. Humility also means taking joy in the gifts that others have.  Humility recognizes that whatever I do creates a reciprocal response. There is no in-breath without an out-breath.  I flow through my life surrounded by energies that move in and out of me—water, food, relationships, work—all of these are steeped in exchange. To awaken to this is to become completely responsible for every thought and action, accepting my place in the scheme of things and taking responsibility for that place, recognizing that every thought I have, everything I do creates a reciprocal response, that I am only one in a vast system of interconnected beings with the responsibility of living my place in sacred reciprocity with those beings. Humility is living the consciousness that I am only one voice in an array of voices, that I am limited in my view and that others may be mirroring to me what I don’t know about myself or don’t want to face about myself, others of whom I am a part and to whom I am connected.⁶

If the psyche is a self-regulating system that seeks its own wholeness and healing and projections are one of the natural ways that psyche functions as a way to wholeness and healing, then what I project onto others is psyche’s way of inviting me to face what is unconscious in me by examining my reactions to the other that I can’t stand or that irritates me.

In “Projections as Doorways for Healing: Part 2” I spoke of energetic fields such as Sheldrake’s morphic fields and Jung’s archetypes. While there are differences in Sheldrake’s morphic fields and Jung archetypes, archetypes with their tendency “to attract those experiences that match their energy” and morphic fields which influence the development of all living organisms—from cells to people—through morphic resonance, or “a tuning into” indicate that something outside of our personal psychology, something transpersonal influences our emotions, thoughts, and behaviors. Both Jung and Sheldrake assert that some sort of field or fields influence how we see, experience and interact in the world.

 Dr. Will Taegel has added to the discussion on fields, identifying what he calls eco-fields. An eco-field is a region or space configuration of non-material influence (energy), vibrating with information and meaning underlying a specific location.⁷ The difference between Taegel’s eco-fields and Sheldrake’s morphic fields is that Taegel’s eco-fields refer to specific physical locations where Sheldrake’s morphic fields refer to organisms in general (i.e., species of plants, animals, birds, or groupings of people, the body’s organs).

Philosopher and systems theorist Ervin Laszlo shows how the discovery in physics of the zero point energy field (ZPE), is also the discovery of a universal information field. Mystics and sages have long maintained that an interconnecting cosmic field exists at the roots of reality that conserves and conveys information, a field known as the Akashic Record. Laszlo suggests that the Akashic-field is like a hologram that is imprinted with all that has been or ever will be.  “This zero-point Akashic-field-or "A-Field" as Laszlo calls it, is not only the original source of all things that arise in time and space; it is also the constant and enduring memory of the universe. The "A-Field" holds the record of all that has ever happened in life, on Earth, and in the cosmos and relates it to all that has yet to happen. It is essentially what helps a universe know how to become a universe, how plants know how to be plants and so forth. It literally conveys all the information of life itself.”⁷ What appears common to all these fields is the idea that they hold memories of the past and literally inform the present and future.

These “fields” are vibrating with information—a certain consciousness or intelligence that is particular to each field. They call to us, even pulling us to them, if we can but listen.  Upon reflection, I now wonder if that powerful dream of the two rings was the universe’s response to my soul’s cry to sing its song. But before that, the birds as the song of Nature Herself called to me. I remember even earlier in my life, at the age of 4 or 5 riding my tricycle one early morning and hearing the song of the Mourning Dove and feeling some strange attraction. Even today I can remember the moment I first heard the dove’s song, where I was, the coolness of the morning air,  the sound and the feeling, as if somewhere deep inside me there is a distant memory of that song. Could it be that since that day some morphic, archetypal, or eco-field has been pulling me toward it, toward my song? As I look back over the last 35 years of my life, I see now that all the twists and turns—that awakening in November of 1978 where some voice or awareness called to me “pay attention to your dreams, I will speak to you through them” followed by my journey into Jung and a Jungian analysis, the leaving of the literal and dogmatic meanings of the religious system of my family of origin, the decision to leave teaching and pursue the desire to become a therapist, the move from the town where I had raised my family in order to return to school at age 44 to study social work, the call of my dreams to paint, to my current journey and training in shamanic energy healing—has been the unfolding of that call from the eco-field of my soul as it called forth from its connection to other eco-fields matching its energies or morphic resonance with what would bring me back into relationship with that primordial Oneness—Nature Herself—which is none other than the ground of my own being so that I could sing the song that I was born to sing.

But what does this have to do with this recent irritation toward those people in my life that talk incessantly about things that I judge are unimportant, are none of their business or things they don’t have any control over and furthermore my statement that “if they took charge of or lived their lives they wouldn’t need to obsess about these things?” What am I projecting? Where am I obsessing on things that are trivial, unimportant and none of my business?

Projections are an opportunity to face our unconscious selves, opportunities to acknowledge those hidden and unknown parts of ourselves that we project onto others. It is recognizing that the other that I can’t stand, such as the incessant talking, is a part of me. Perhaps it is the part of me that wants or needs to talk incessantly about things that aren’t any of my business but I don’t allow a voice, or I judge as inferior, or not as enlightened. Or perhaps I too am giving attention to things in my life that don’t really matter, that are not important to my journey, focusing on things that I can’t control or aren’t any of my business but am not aware of it. Maybe I’m not paying attention to things that I need to pay attention to, things that I don’t think are important but are, things that are my business, but I am ignoring. Certainly I know rationally that what others talk about or worry about or complain about is not any of my business. So why does it upset me so? My admonition that “if they would just live their own lives, they wouldn’t need to obsess on all this trivial, unimportant information they have no control over” might give me a clue. Am I not living my life? In other words, am I not “singing my soul’s song”?  If I were truly living my life would I be so upset and irritated by the lives they were choosing to live, the things they were choosing to focus on? Do I trivialize myself that way that I am I trivializing them? Do I make myself unimportant which is why I get so upset when they make everything important? Could they be mirroring to me my own feelings regarding what is or isn’t important? They talk with such authority, as if what they think or say is the way it is! Or the way it should be, making their opinions seem like judgments of right and wrong. Why do these conversations that I overhear irritate me so?

In light of the theme or story that has emerged in the writing of this blog, the question becomes, “Where or how am I’m not ‘singing my song’?” How am I’m not stepping into my gifts and living what I know? How am I not living my soul’s life? To put this in the context of the dream that ushered in my journey in Peru, how am I’m not owning and living my humility. Humility is living one’s life, living one’s destiny to the fullest in a reciprocal response to all that is—no better than, no less than—just living one’s life, living one’s gifts, living one’s limitations, being at peace with myself. Instead of focusing on what others are or are not doing, on what others are being or not being, I need to focus on what I am or am not doing, what I am being or not being. Where am I trivializing myself? Where am I not making something important that I need to make important? Where am I not living consciously and just letting old patterns of incessant chatter take over my life?

As I continue to reflect on this question, I notice running in the background of my mind thoughts and images that are also trivial, unimportant, and really should not be any of my business in light of taking responsibility for living the life that I want to live. These are thoughts of fear, fear that I won’t know what to do, fear that I’ll do it wrong, fear that I won’t be enough. Although I have worked on this “fear pattern” multiple times in various ways, it continues to run incessantly in the background of my mind. No wonder I am so angry and irritated with people when I hear them going on and on about this or that. They mirror my own inability to stop the incessant chattering of my own fearful mind--fear of not being enough, not having the answer, not knowing what to do, or of being wrong, or not being good enough—that gets in the way of me living my life, “singing my song.”

In the midst of writing this blog, I dream that I drive my car to a car wash. I am with a group of many people who are in their cars. We have all come for what seems like some kind of a cleaning or cleansing—a car wash. Several of us line up our cars in long rows and water begins to flow through them somehow. I notice that dirt, dark sludge is rising to the top of this canopy like thing over the tops of our cars and washing away. We are then given two boxes of “stuff.” I really don’t know what is in the boxes except that it is treatment that we are to take home and use to continue the cleansing process. I notice there are others waiting in line to undergo this process.

This dream comes in the context of my doing work on my fear part, fear of being wrong, fear of not knowing, fear of being inadequate, fear of not being good enough. I’m continuing to live the long standing story going back to childhood that I won’t have the right answer, that I’ll be wrong, that I won’t know what to do, that I won’t be enough, that I won’t have the “right stuff” and the deeper fear of embarrassment and looking stupid. All of this is mental chatter--irrelevant, unimportant stuff--that I no longer have any business paying attention to if I want to “sing my song.”

As I reflect on this mental chatter I feel again that little boy in me that felt embarrassed when his friends made fun of him for the way he was, felt wrong and stupid when his classmates laughed at him for giving a wrong answer, and felt like he couldn’t do anything right when criticized for who he was and how he did things. This boy went on a journey to become perfect, to make sure he knew what he needed to know, to be “right” so that he would never feel embarrassed, stupid or wrong again. And yet all my life there has been something inside me, a “knowing” that has pushed me to step into places where I continually run the risk of being judged by others as “wrong” or “stupid” or “not knowing.” And yet this voice continues, expressing itself as dreams, fantasies, ideas and paintings, asking me to pay attention to synchronicities that another person would call "coincidences" or "non-sense", or “magical thinking”. I, too, have a part that would minimize these occurrences, trivialize them, minimize them, judge them as somehow wrong, stupid, not-important and not give them the attention they need and deserve. And therein lies the projection. The very thing that I am irritated at my friends for doing—talking incessantly, on and on about things they have no control over, are none of their business, and they can’t or won’t do anything about mirrors to me on one hand, the chatter in my own head that “I’m not good enough”, “I might do it wrong”, “I don’t know enough”, that keeps me from “singing my song”, i.e., living my life. And on the other hand, it mirrors to me my own trivializing and not making important those things that are important, my soul’s song, out of fear that others will judge it as “wrong,” or “stupid” the very thing I was doing to my friends and the very thing I was doing to “the song” in me.

 Hidden in this projection are the wounds of embarrassment, feeling rejected, stupid, not good enough and the fear that once again I’ll be “wrong.” As I bring these wounds into the healing aspects of the whole and healed Self holding them with what Richard Schwartz calls curiosity, compassion, creativity, confidence, connectedness, clarity, calmness and courage,⁹ they transform and become allies working for me. From the shamanic point of view, these wounds live in my luminous energy field as energetic imprints, a blueprint of fear that continues to in-form my life.  Through energy work I am able to energetically release this pattern of fear of embarrassment, rejection, stupidity, and not feeling good enough, thank them for their gifts to me-- persistence to seek the answers and to hold with compassion others who are wounded and answer my soul’s call to “sing my song.”

With the releasing of the energetic burdens of this fear pattern I can now focus on those thoughts that are important, that are relevant, that are my business—thoughts that support the new story that wants to live in me—this shamanic and energy healer. I can trust the parts in both myself and in my clients that know how to facilitate healing to show up. I can trust the spirits to show up and help. I can hold the space to allow spirit to do whatever work spirit deems necessary to do. I can love my fearful part. I can acknowledge and honor it without allowing it to take over the session and in doing so I love, honor and accept my client’s fear part which allows it to enter into the healing circle.

While the above dream speaks of my personal cleaning of negative energies related to this fear part, it also hints of a collective aspect—that this fear is a collective problem, suggested by the fact that there are others with me in the dream who are undergoing this cleansing, plus multitudes lined up waiting their turn in the cleansing process. As a collective problem it speaks to the idea of an archetypal or morphic field that attracts and perpetuates those experiences that match its energy. As a collective problem it speaks of a society that through its own fear wound has tapped into the archetype of fear which continues to fuel our collective fears.  But that is a topic for another blog. I will close by asking the questions: “where might we all be projecting our fears onto the environment around us” and “how does this fear keep us from singing our soul’s song?”

One last synchronicity: While writing this blog, at the very moment that I was typing the words , “I just want to sing my song”, I look out my window and see 9 Robins sitting in a river birch tree. The date is December 22 and although Robins do remain throughout the winter in Indianapolis, the sight of seeing 9 Robins in one place at this very moment seemed significant. I reach down and pick up Ted Andrews’ book, Animal Speak, and look up his writing on the Robin. My eyes fall on “It [Robin] reflects a need to sing your own song forth if you wish new growth.”  Was my attention somehow drawn to the Robins, all nine of them, at this exact moment as another reminder for me to “sing my song?”

 

Notes

¹Samuels, Shorter and Plaut. A Critical Dictionary of Jungian Analysis, p.100.

²A despacho is the Andean practice of making offerings to the mountains, Mother Earth, and other spirits of nature in reciprocity, reverence, and thanksgiving. It is an act of love and a reminder of the connections we share with all beings, elements, spirits, and sacred places. At the deepest level, it is an opportunity to enter into the essential unity of all things, the living energy of the universe. A despacho is created during a ceremony. The ceremony brings participants into alignment with their personal intent, the group intent, and gratitude to the earth, which supports us in all our endeavors. It also brings participants into internal alignment with their physical action, their feeling and heart, and spirit or energetic wisdom. Finally making a despacho strengthens the luminous fibers that connect us all.

³Munay means “I love you” and “Be as thou art.” The Munay-Ki are rites that transform and upgrade the luminous energy field. They are energetic transmissions that heal the wounds of the past, our karmic and genetic inheritance, enabling us to grow a new body—one that ages, heals and dies differently. The Munay-Ki is our invitation to dream a new world into being.

⁴The energy work of this shamanic healing tradition operates on the belief that we are surrounded by a Luminous Energy Field (LEF). Imagine that you are enveloped in a translucent, multicolored orb pulsing with blues, greens, magentas, and yellows, enfolding you to the width of your outstretched arms. Just above your skin streams of golden light shimmer and flow through the acupuncture meridians. Between your skin and the membrane of the LEF swirl currents that fuse into whirlpools of light, called subtle energy. You may have heard of subtle energy through such terms as life force, chi, meridians, chakras, biofields, or auras. These energies are called “subtle” because they are not easily detectable and scientists have not been able to develop instruments to reliably measure them. According to this tradition, the LEF contains an archive of all our personal and ancestral memories, what we inherited, early life trauma, our genetic information. These records or imprints are stored in full color and intensity of emotion, like dormant computer programs that when activated compel us toward behaviors, relationships, accidents, and illnesses that match the imprint or imitate the initial wounding. The patterns repeat themselves. Our stories repeat themselves. These imprints in the LEF predispose us to follow certain pathways in life. The LEF contains a template for how our life will unfold based on the imprints in the LEF. It organizes our lives the way a magnet organizes the iron filings on a piece of glass. This energy work, called the Illumination Process, allows us to clear and release the negative content of an imprint and download a new code free of this negative and toxic information so that we don’t have to work it out in our next job, next spouse, next city, etc.

⁵The Q'eros are the last of the Incas, a tribe of near 1500 who sought refuge in a wide area of the mist-shrouded mountains of Peru near Paucartambo, between 14,000 and 22,000 feet elevation, in order to escape the conquering conquistadors. They live in complete harmony and reciprocal exchange with all of nature, in a near-constant state of reverence for creation itself. They speak directly to the mountains, the rivers and the sun. For 500 years the Q'ero elders have preserved a sacred prophecy of a great change, or 'pacachuti', in which the world be turned right-side-up, harmony and order would be restored, and chaos and disorder ended. The Q'eros speak only Quechua, the language of the Incas, and they have lived in their villages high in the Andes, in virtual solitude from the world, until their 'discovering' in 1949 by the anthropologist Oscar Nunez del Prado. The first expedition to the Q'ero villages then occurred in 1955. Recently, Q'ero elders journeyed to North America in fulfillment of their prophecies. In November 1996, a small group of them, including the tribal leader and the head shaman, visited several cities in the US, including New York, where they performed a private ceremony at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine. The shamanic ritual had not been performed for 500 years. According to ancient prophecy, this is the time of the great gathering called 'mastay', and reintegration of the peoples of the four directions. The Q'eros are releasing their teachings to the West, in preparation for the day the Eagle of the North and the Condor of the South (the Americas) fly together again. They believe that munay, love and compassion, will be the guiding force of this great gathering of the peoples. The prophecy holds that North America will supply the physical strenght, or body, Europe will supply the mental aspect, or head, and the heart will be supply by South America.

⁶Alberto Villoldo, The Four Winds and Stephan Beyer, “What do the Spirits want from us?”⁷Taegel, Will, The Mother Tongue.⁸C.J. Martes at cjmartes.com⁹Schwartz, Richard.  Introduction to the Internal Family Systems Model.