The shamanic vocation usually begins with an omen or call. The call comes in various ways. It may come through a serious and life-threatening illness from which a person unexpectedly or miraculously recovers. The call may come through a psychological or spiritual crisis which appears as a psychotic break where the lines between the visible and invisible worlds or the worlds of matter and spirit dissolve and the spirits break through into a person’s life with an onslaught of unusual psychological experiences. The call may come during a vision quest or solitary vigil where you discover your soul’s path through a vision, or the call may come, as in my case, through your dreams.

I dream that a woman is sick. I am called to come heal her. I go to the house where the woman lives. Her husband comes out to meet me. He stops me, and says he doesn’t know me and won’t let me in the house to see his wife. His wife’s mother comes to the door and says, “He’s okay. I called him to come.” He then lets me enter. I go to the sick lady’s room. She is in bed. I sit on a chair beside the bed and just sit quietly with her. Suddenly I see myself with bird feathers—like a headdress you might see a Native American wearing in a Native American dance. I’m just sitting there with this feather headdress on. I then realize that I am taking the lady’s ill energy into me and as I do it is transformed, that is, it is healed and made healthy as it passes through my energy and returns to her, much like blood is cleansed by passing it through one of those machines that removes contamination from diseased blood.

Although this dream may be understood as the healing of my own feminine, it can also be understood as a call from the feminine to become an energy healer. This theme of the call of the feminine and energy healing continued in another dream.

I dream that I am with an energy healer. She is training a group of us to heal pain in the body through energy. She demonstrates by touching the area where the pain is located and then touching the herb that is needed for the healing. She then touches the body in various places to balance the energy. It is the balancing of the energy that eliminates the pain. I ask her how she knows what herb to use. She says that she sees it. She sees the herb the body needs. The body tells her.

I dream that my daughter and I are walking in the town where we used to live. We are walking on familiar streets. We come to another street and turn left. Suddenly we are walking in a different place. Everything is different. We turn again, trying to figure out where we are when we meet a man, a woman, and a little girl living in a house up on stilts. We don’t know them, but they look vaguely familiar. We tell them we were in Bluffton, and we made a turn and suddenly we aren’t in the small mid-western town anymore.

I then dream the meaning of this dream. I am told that what happened was that we had walked into another dimension. Upon this realization, my body is filled with chills. I realize that this is what happens to people who can see into the spirit realm. They go into another dimension. I then practice going into this other dimension, moving back and forth between the two realities. I go into the other dimension and then struggle and struggle to come back. My body is very heavy. I can’t move. I have difficulty swallowing. I know that there is other realm or reality happening simultaneously, and that I had walked into that realm. I discover that I can do it at will, move in and out of these two dimensions at will or consciously. The purpose of seeing into this other realm is to see the sources of people’s problems and to help them heal.

It would be several years before I would understand the implications and importance of this dream. As I began my training in shamanism, I discovered that central to shamanic healing practices is what is called “shamanic journeying.” When journeying, the shaman enters into an altered state of consciousness and travels outside of time into the hidden realms, which are called non-ordinary reality or the spirit realm. In these hidden realms one is can see the root cause of problems. In these realms are helping and compassionate spirits, who offer their guidance and also their healing and help on behalf of all life on earth.

I dream I am with a man and a woman. A lady comes for healing. We use hypnosis. We all have a part in putting her into trance. She is driving a car around a large circle. Suddenly the outside of the car bursts into flames. The lady is propelled around the track under the power of this energy. I recognize this is divine healing energy and know that she is being healed. She goes around the track several times. Finally, she is again driving the car and drives up and stops. We know she is healed, an expression of divine power and energy.

Behind the form of any problem is formless energy. The basic stuff of the unconscious is at its core pure energy—formless energy that is malleable to human intention. We can both access and interact with this energy. Our expectations and intentions themselves causes our energy to flow out into the world and affect other energy systems. As we get in touch with the unconscious through our dreams, and other avenues such as writing, art, dance, and other forms of Active Imagination, we have the capacity to shape that energy into forms.

There is a magic within each of us that we continually deny because it lies in the realm of the imagination—in the imaginal realm. It is the imaginal realm that gives power to the symbols and activates their power to heal. A previous dream had told me that symbols are alive. They are living patterns of energy, vibrating with information. Jung has pointed out that “an image or word or act is symbolic when it intends more than it says, when it implies more than its immediate meaning.”  I have maintained throughout this book that I saw the images in my same-sex dreams, fantasies, and behaviors as symbolic of something else, some other man living in my soul that wanted expression. As I increasingly integrated this man into consciousness, I awakened to another reality—the reality of the energetic world. This would slowly result in a change in my consciousness and my world view and ushered in the shaman.

To read how sexual attraction and dreams can be doorways to the others in us that want to live—even a shaman, download a free excerpt from my book, The Other Man in Me, Erotic Longing, Lust and Love: The Soul Calling at https://www.sheldonshalley.com/book-excerpt-download or check it out at https://www.amazon.com/Other-Man-Me-Longing-Calling/dp/1098334981

If you are interested in shamanism and shamanic healing, visit https://www.sheldonshalley.com/shamanic-healing