I just want to say that a lot of what we are dealing with as United Statians (because "Americans" would cover far more countries than the US), is an all out war on our minds. As a healer, it is my foremost duty to keep my being as clear as possible from the destructive messages that are being continually fed to me through the media and through the people around me who have inadvertently become the mouth pieces of the media.

Is this post about Shamanism? Absolutely. We learn in the Foundation classes that our culture is much more psychically dangerous than many others because: most people are not aware or refuse to believe in things like soul stealing, curses and psychic intrusions, the media is doing a number on us every day.

The images we see are filtered, over saturated, the conversations the characters have are simplistic, often racially biased, almost always class biased. Evening stories are fundamental to the human experience but stories from Hollywood and the TV set are usually not based in wisdom.

I have noticed a phenomena within myself lately. I call it "self-projection". It happens when I decide how I will feel about something before I encounter it. It's like the Kodak picture moment, whether it is happiness or grief. If it feels too sweet, too....anything - if there is a scent of fear or hollowness about it, I try to make myself stop. Stop casting visual images to invoke feelings of the past, feelings from some song I heard, feelings I feel I am "supposed" to feel. It's like I am doing the same insidious magic on myself that the media casts every day. If I stop, stop and wait, the same way I do when my shamanic journeys start feeling too pushed, then I give an opportunity for something genuine to come in. If I stop, I can even save myself from evoking an old way I used to feel spirit after I have outgrown it.

I think when those of us who are active healers are out there, we need to be aware that our clients are often wounded by the mis-messages that the media casts. That as United Statesians, we often align our dreams and desires to things we are told we should want, thus leading us down an untrue path.

How do I know this? When I go to work on Monday and the only office conversation with any zeal is about the movies or the TV. When I tell a friend about my woes or bring up a political issue and only hear back cliches from the corporate media. It is the human condition for us to take characters from stories and let them live inside us but when the stories being told around us are not based in values that we personally believe in, this creates a very dangerous landscape in which the powers that be easily use to their advantage.

I believe that those of us who are devoted to healing are an important part of the ecosystem of peace-makers. The other branches include folks like the organic farmers, the great healing musicians, the social workers and the political activists. We all focus on a different part of the work of healing, using our talents and passion in the places where our hearts most shine. Just because many healers may not be drawn to political activism does not mean that we should not be aware of the vast damage being done to people everywhere by our political system. Perhaps we are activists. We are the activists of the soul plane. We tend the gardens of spiritual energies so those who go out and stand face to face with such powers on the protests lines have somewhere to go home for healing.

Those are my thoughts.