Afraid of Your Own Shadow?

Have you ever noticed how the shadow that is cast by your body so often seems so much larger than your physical self? We all know intellectually that his completely depends upon the disbursement of light. What angle the light is at and how intense it is will determine how large or small our shadows appear to be. And often the brighter the light, the darker the shadow.

On a deeply primal level, however, there is fear about how big that shadow is. We still equate the shadow with something scary and evil. If you walk at night on a street with street lights, you will notice that your shadow will circle you. That is what the shadow self is supposed to do. It circles you to protect you. You see, no matter how aggressive anyone may be, they will never be as formidable as your own shadow self.

The reason for this is that the shadow self is our magical self. It knows all the dark nooks and crannies and it knows how to make itself appear larger than life or small as a pin prick. This is not just about optical illusion. This is about the mastery of the shadow self. In order to master it, though, we need to also befriend it. We need to show no fear of the dark and shadowy sides of our personalities. Those who are hyper alert to the Light (religious fanatics) will try to destroy the magical aspects of our psyches. Those who are more comfortable with themselves in general will come to a quiet understanding of the shadow self. Those who are more fascinated by the possibilities will actually do the work to become at one with (in allegiance with) the shadow self. They are the ones who will always master their full potential because they will not settle for anything less than that. They are the movers and shakers of our world and the political activists and the magicians and the healers. Hats off to all those who are doing the work and walking the walk!

Now, take a walk at night and notice your shadow. Use the walk as a meditation to become more familiar with the shadow self. Allow yourself to have a morbid sense of humor and allow yourself to laugh at the macabre. Some would say that is twisted. Others, like myself, know that when you can express yourself in this way, you are truly home.

Blessed Be
Trent
http://www.youtube.com/trentdeerhorn
www.deerhornshamanic.com

The Sounds of Autumn

This morning while driving my Love to work, I heard, above the din of morning crush hour traffic and the stereo and rolled up windows, the sound of Canada Geese migrating. I immediately shut off the stereo and cracked open the window. I love that sound, which my Love could still not hear past the traffic noise, because it means that Autumn is here. In the Spring it is a welcome sound as well. But why do I love Autumn?

Well, mostly it is the colors. We got deprived of that last autumn. The leaves never had a chance to turn before it froze. This year our city is a myriad of gorgeous colors. I also like the smells of autumn. I know, it is the smell of rot. but it is so sweet. Then there is the sound of the geese. I love that.

When we lived in a downtown high rise along the river, it was not so special as we heard it day and night from spring to winter. But when you don't have that feeling of "For the love of God, could you all just shut up?!" in the middle of the day/middle of the night/middle of the morning/middle of the evening, then it is quite spectacular! I also like the fact that what is approaching is the Pagan New Year, Samhain. We are having a costume drum circle on the 30th of October to celebrate and I am getting so much stuff in my garage, thanks to a good electrician friend of mine, upgraded so that we have heat and better lighting. Now I just have to see about curtaining off the clutter stuff.

So anyway, the sound of the migrating geese was one that just fed my soul this morning. I hope you all get an opportunity to experience something today that will feed your soul.

Blessed Be
Trent
http://www.youtube.com/trentdeerhorn
www.deerhornshamanic.com

Space News

This photo was taken by Ed Stockard while at the Arctic Circle. Some of those sun flares that I have written about recently result in some of the most amazing Aurora Borealis. I mentioned in a previous blog that the Northern Lights also make a sound. It is like a loud crackle usually, but I have also heard it more like a boom when they burst through the sky. What I don't think I mentioned was that they can touch ground.

I was lying on the ground watching the Northern Lights one night. I was thinking about how some of the northern cultures talk about the spirits in the Northern Lights, when suddenly BAM! There was this flash of light from the aurora that burst downward. It felt like it hit me right in the third eye! I felt some electrical current move through my body and all I could see was the colors of the Lights. Then, just as suddenly, it retracted. I watched it move back up into the sky and join the rest of the Lights.

I think that this was probably quite anomalous. I have never heard of this happening to anyone before and have never since heard of it. I am still not sure if I was in the right place at the right time, or the wrong place at the wrong time, for this to occur. I do wish someone else was there to witness it. Since then, though, I have a sense that perhaps the Northern peoples are correct. Perhaps there is indeed an intelligence to the Lights that science cannot measure or understand....yet.

Blessed Be
Trent
http://www.youtube.com/trentdeerhorn
www.deerhornshamanic.com

Seeing Eye 2 Eye

We don't always see eye to eye. Most of us go through life wondering if we are aliens because no one else seems to view the world with the same set of lenses that we do. When we finally discover that there is indeed someone else who agrees, it becomes one of the most happy and, in fact, intimate moments that we will experience.

There is something to be said for having your "tribe". People who understand you and who acknowledge you for who you are turn out to be the greatest treasures in our lives. The fact that we can do the same for them in return makes us treasures in their lives as well. But how do we get there?

In order to even discover who these other members of our tribe are, we have to begin with the assumption of trust. For those of us who have been burned repeatedly, that trust is a difficult thing to start with. I have struggled with that for most of my life and decided that I need to trust myself and my instincts. If my intuition is telling me not to trust a person, then I distance quickly. But if it is telling me that this person is worthy of my trust, that is where I begin. We have been taught through our culture and experiences that we can't trust our intuitive processes, but we actually can. So when I get the green light with someone, I will trust them. Now, they do have to live up to that trust, and, with a few minor exceptions, they usually do. It is amazing to me that people will naturally want to live up to our trust levels. At the same time, if we don't trust them they will also live up to that. I really don't think that this has to do with us "creating our experiential reality" with those folks. I think that they simply turn out to be who we "knew" they would because of our ability to listen to our intuition.Second chances? Depending on the circumstances, I believe in them. I know I would certainly want a second chance if I somehow screwed up and lost someone's trust. But after that, there are no third chances.

I have the pleasure of having very good friends in 3 fabulous women with whom I used to work. Our work situations have all gone in different directions, but we still get together once a month for dinner and a visit. I feel blessed to have these people in my life. We laugh so hard we cry and allow ourselves to share on much deeper levels than is often experienced in friendships. We professionally support each other and personally care very deeply for each other. I consider these women to be part of my soul family. I am incredibly grateful for their presence in my life and look forward to years of dinners and birthday parties and such.

We see eye to eye in that we have a much more holistic view of life and the world. But we don't have to agree on absolutely everything either. Sometimes we can have completely different views on things, but also appreciate the sharing of different perspectives. I think that is what helps us all to grow. Being open to new thoughts and ideas helps to create a more encompassing understanding, even if it is something that is just not for us or challenges our paradigms. Besides, it keeps the conversations highly entertaining!

Blessed Be
Trent
http://www.youtube.com/trentdeerhorn
www.deerhornshamanic.com

Dress For Success

I don't know if this is exactly what they meant by that, but I like the twist. In fact, I remember "borrowing" one of my father's ties like this one once to go to a party. I would have been somewhere between 18 and 22 and not that far off from the build that this model guy has. Yup, you guessed it...eventually that was all I was wearing on top. It went over great with the girls at the party. It made some of the guys angry. I think they were just jealous because I could "pull it off" where they wouldn't have the guts.

Yes, I returned the tie...once I finally found it a week later. I won't go into where I found it. We are told so often that dressing for success means to don a tie. At least that is what it means for men. I hate ties. I do own some that I wear now and then at a ballroom dance or something, but if I can get away with not wearing one, all the better. Socks fall into the same category. I hate feeling constricted or like I can't breathe. I think I breathe through my feet, because I can only handle socks for an extremely short period of time and then they have gotta come off! I think that if I were living in a warmer climate, I would likely be a nudist. I love being naked and yet our climate is too cold for that on a regular basis. So I wear some kinda loin cloth or large scarf (usually around my waist) for when I am hangin' around the house (no pun intended!) and do my relaxing or housework or whatever. My Love enjoys it, so long as I am not flashing the neighbours.

You may think that this is way too much information....but really it is a cautionary note. Don't just "drop by" because you never know..... Or perhaps you may want to park across the street with some binoculars! Whatever strikes your fancy I guess. We do keep our blinds closed in the evening though.

As for success....I am successful. I don't need to be in a monkey suit to do that. Heck I could even be successful if all I wore was a kilt!

Blessed Be
Trent
http://www.youtube.com/trentdeerhorn
www.deerhornshamanic.com

Have Faith

When I was young and in my teens, I was a kid with a lot of weight on his shoulders. It is not easy being a peace keeper in a dysfunctional family. I spent a lot of time escaping into alternate realities so that I could just cope with the stress of it all. For the longest time I thought that these alternate realities were just fantasy. Turns out....they weren't.

If I had not opened my mind to these alternate realities I would not have connected with Spirit, with my Totem Animals, with my ability to journey and to dream walk. These abilities later in life have become something that has allowed me to assist people and to help them to heal. What once felt like a weight on my shoulders has now become something that is liberating not just for myself but for many of my people. Now people have faith in me. They know that I will keep it real and that I will help them to heal. I try every day to live up to that. I don't see it as an expectation because I don't do it for them as much as I help them to do it for themselves. Those who want someone to just come in and "fix it" are disappointed and some of them learn to utilize my expertize to learn to do it themselves. Others fade away because I am not the one for them. I won't allow them to give up their personal responsibility in their healing and I won't allow them to put me on a pedestal. Healing is work. Have faith that, with a little assistance here and there, you can do it. But the point is that it is you that is doing it. Not anyone else. Have faith.

Blessed Be
Trent
http://www.youtube.com/trentdeerhorn
www.deerhornshamanic.com

Get Me Off This Pedestal!

It doesn't look very comfortable, does it? Well, it isn't. I don't put others on pedestals. But what I really don't like is when people try to put me on one. I find it is the most uncomfortable thing going. Mostly, what it says to me is that the other person who is doing this to me really doesn't know me well at all. He or she is also not honoring his or her own fabulous self. Instead the person is deifying me an putting all the responsibility for his or her own life in my hands. Screw that!

I can't stand being on a pedestal. People! I am just a guy. I breathe, and my heart beats just like everyone else's. I sweat and I fart and burp, just like any other biological system. Most often when people do this to me it is because they have not done their own self work. So yes, words that escape my lips will seem like they are the wisdom of the Gods! My insights will seem like I am seeing into their souls. Really, it is just that I have been around the block....a few times....okay, more than a few, but who's counting?

With age (I got that!) and experience (hey, I got that too!) comes wisdom. It is as simple as that. Some of us are also born with a bit of it. From the mouths of babes come the most profound wisdoms of them all! No, I don't mean the babes on the street corner or in the office space! Sheesh! I am talking about the little ones, the young ones, the children of the earth. They are our greatest teachers! Just because they are small does not disqualify their wisdom. They have just arrived on the scene this time around, but they have also been around the block a time or two and have been closer to the Light more recently than the rest of us.

So what does a person do when someone has put them on a pedestal? Well, I tend to kick it out from under myself pretty quickly. Then I let out a long and horribly smelling fart. Then I laugh out loud. I may even snort. I have my faults. I am not perfect and I have made many mistakes along the way. I am trying to be a better man today than the one I was last week. It is a journey. It is a difficult enough journey to take without someone putting the pressure on me by putting me up on a pedestal. Every journey does, however, begin with one step. I figure that if a journey were to take one hundred steps, and I am able to take the first step, then I can very likely take the other 99 as well. I'm in. So watch out world! Here I come and I am gonna be even better than I was last week!

Blessed Be
Trent
http://www.youtube.com/trentdeerhorn
www.deerhornshamanic.com

The Closer We Get

This photo, from Spaceweathernews, is of Jupiter. Jupiter, the last couple of days, has been closer to Earth than it has been in a very long time, and closer than it will be for a very long time to come. So what?

Well, I have noticed that Jupiter's influence on people is that it tends to bring out the masculine energy big time. That is not a bad thing. In fact, as my Love can attest to, it can be very positive when the masculine energy is amorous. But I did encounter a number of times over the last couple of days some masculine energy that has been downright aggressive! More so than normal, this energy has expressed itself in almost dangerous ways. A guy in a pick up almost running down a cyclist, people being...shall we say...impatient behind the wheel and becoming idgits in the supermarket lineup. That is male energy waaaaaayyyyy out of balance and into the testosterone rush phase. Sheesh! I am happy that this will not be happening again for a very long time. Well....that is until the next time Mercury goes retrograde I suppose...

Blessed Be
Trent
http://www.youtube.com/trentdeerhorn
www.deerhornshamanic.com

Peeking

When I was a kid, I used to do a lot of peeking around corners. I was extremely shy and wanted to know when the coast was clear for me to proceed to my destination. It was a way to keep me safe and my privacy intact. I liked it. Sometimes someone would catch a glimpse of me and invite me to join them. This was okay so long as I liked that person. If I did not like them, then I would disappear around the corner and by the time they would reach the corner to find me I was long gone.

My father liked to utilize this game of mine. He would ask me to discretely observe people who would come over. It may have been a neighbour, a friend or even a business acquaintance. When I was little I thought it was a cool game. Then I realized that afterwards he would always question/grill me on my observations. It wasn't very long before I would not play the game anymore because I knew he was trying to get me to utilize my other senses as well. Observation is one thing, psychically spying on another is something else entirely. As a young boy I got that. Why, as an adult, he did not is beyond me. From then on I was extremely cautious about utilizing any of my abilities for his benefit. He was angry about that, but could do nothing to change it.
Many years later, when he was on his death bed, he wanted me to heal him. He was already with one foot out the door and had been long gone from me emotionally anyway, so I did a bit of energy healing to help him be comfortable, but explained to him that I was not going to attempt to save his life. That was going to be between him and whatever Deity he was into. He got hostile angry so I left. The next I saw him was in his casket a few days later. At least he hopefully found some peace.

People have asked me, when I have shared this story, if I ever feel guilt about not trying to save him? The answer is no, I do not and will never feel guilt about that when there are so many more constructive things upon which to apply guilt. I am not one who gets wrapped up in the drama of trying to save a person who is on their death bed. I find it much more compassionate to help them to be comfortable and reassure them that their next journey will be a good and exciting one. We all drop our physical robes at some point in time. For some it is a sudden process. For others it is a long, drawn out and painful one. Why would I ever want to make them endure more pain? We treat our dogs better than we do our people when it comes to letting them go and allowing them to die with dignity.

I do hope that when it is my time to go, everyone around me will cheer me on for that. I don't want people sobbing and asking God to spare my life if it is time for me to go home. I had a future life journey once to a culture in which I am going to live and in that lifetime I was a teacher of some very gifted young children. I had a swack of my own, but loved to teach them all. When my life was complete I was a very old man who knew it was time for me to move on. I was helped into a stand up tube, said goodbye to my loved ones and then gave the signal to the operator of the controls. My body was, which the flick of a switch, evaporated. No fuss, no muss. I was simply liberated from my physical body and my soul was allowed to instantly move on into the Light of Spirit. It was beautiful.

As I had a peek at that lifetime, I was reminded of how, as a child in this lifetime, I would peek around corners. But this was different. I was peeking into the future. I look forward to that lifetime. It is not that this one is exceptionally bad or anything. In fact I quite love my life this time around. I have simply always been one who looks to the future and looks forward to the adventure. Oh, and I am also not so painfully shy anymore. Still shy, but not so bad.

Blessed Be
Trent
http://www.youtube.com/trentdeerhorn
www.deerhornshamanic.com

Just Hold Me

There is so much homophobia in our world. So much so that it makes grown men turn little boys away when they need comfort and love. They feel that in order to give that it will make them gay or something. Yet when you look at soldiers in battle and the terror that they all experience, they are always able to hold each other in their arms and comfort their brothers in arms. What a contradiction.

I remember a friend of mine who had just gone through a break up with his girlfriend being devastated. He came to my home and was in uncontrollable tears. I wanted to cry for him as well, but instead all I could do was take him into my arms and hold him tight. He sobbed his heart out and I just held him and made myself be strong for him. I whispered to him that although it was really shitty right now and it felt like he was gonna die, it was going to be okay and I would help him through it. We sat up all night drinking coffee and talking about his relationship with her, the good parts and the crummy parts, and when the sun rose he laid his head on my lap on the sofa and fell into a deep healing sleep. A few hours and a wicked kink in my neck later, he woke up, cried a bit more, and then got himself ready to go to work. He was so grateful that I had simply held him. He felt a bit embarrassed about having fallen apart, but he was glad that he instinctively knew where he needed to go to have someone help him through his crisis.

I have never had a man do that for me. I think it would have been nice if someone had, but no one has ever had the courage to do that. I hope now that I will never need that, because there just might not be anyone there to catch me when I am falling. But if fall I must, I will have to trust that I will either learn to fly or find a soft and comforting place to land.

Hold you sons. Hold your brothers. Hold your fathers. Hold your husbands. Hold your lovers. He might be a guy, but he needs to be held just as much as anyone else. Holding him won't make either one of you gay if you are also a man. From the time we are born till the time we die, no matter how long a period of time there is between the two, we all need to be held. It is a basic human need. Allow it to become fulfilled.

Blessings

Trent
http://www.youtube.com/trentdeerhorn
www.deerhornshamanic.com

The Black Fawn

I don't know about you, but I cannot read the acknowledgement on the bottom left corner of this photo. So I apologize to whomever took this picture if I am infringing on any copy write stuff. I also applaud you for taking such an amazing photo, whoever you are!

This one came to me via email and I have now saved it as my screen saver. The reason....I can relate. It reminds me of myself when I was a child. I was always running full throttle with joy in my heart and loved being in the great outdoors. I was also different from the other kids I knew....actually from most of the other people, child or adult, that I knew. So in a way it is a representation of my freedom as well as of my greatest challenges.

The challenges were to find a way to "fit in" and to connect on a social level without compromising my own uniqueness and to find a way to not have my uniqueness put me into dangerous situations. I am still a part of the herd, but not in a way that helps me to "blend in" very easily. There are others like me out there, but we tend to stay as hidden as possible just out of self-preservation.

So along the way I discovered that I needed to grow thicker skin. That meant that in order to not get all caught up in society's expectations of me I had to find a way to not give a crap about what those expectations were. This was not an easy task by any stretch. I had to find ways of gaining speed and leaping far and high in order to escape those expectations. I think that I have, for the most part, become quite successful at this. It has not been without a few stumbling blocks along the way. But each time I stumbled I discovered a new way to not stumble the next time.

So now here I am, a fully grown black deer(horn) and someone who helps others to find their own paths amongst the world of expectations and limitations. In a way, I guess that I am helping them to join my herd of misfits. Not that I want followers by any stretch, but at least some amount of strength comes in numbers. That way we can all support and watch out for each other. Unfortunately, we do still live in a world where "different" is considered to be dangerous. Human responses to "different" can be quite aggressive at times. So ya, we all need to stick together and support our uniqueness while helping each other to still function in a dysfunctional world.

Blessed Be
Trent
http://www.youtube.com/trentdeerhorn
www.deerhornshamanic.com

I've Got Wood!

I know...it sounds kinda sexual. It was meant to. Indeed, my wood pile is intact and, should we have a major power outage, we have enough that we can actually use our fire bowl in the garage if need be. I feel a wee bit prepared, but not as much as I would if we had a wood burning fireplace in the house. I didn't want to have to chop wood all winter long, so we accepted the gas fire place for now.

This, however, is not why I am writing. I had an interesting conversation with my niece last night and we were talking about what it was like for me to grow up with my mother going through menopause. It was hell. Actually, it was HELL. It also affected my romantic relationships with women later in my life. With all the verbal abuse and sometimes physical things that were done during her very trying time, I grew up with a distinct sense that I was dirt just because I was male. I was not worthy of affection, devotion or love. This set me up for some pretty strange romantic relationships wherein I was abandoned emotionally, or physically or both. It took only about 40 years for me to get out of that cycle. I actually used to get embarrassed by the fact that I would become sexually aroused with my woman. I know...too much information! But really, it has to be out there so people can learn, so I am putting it out there.

I would feel like there was shame and guilt because I found a woman desirable and had a physical response. I couldn't thoroughly enjoy oral sex because I was terrified that she might want to be aggressive and bite it off or something. When I look at how twisted up inside the experience made me, it amazes me that I have children at all! Now, after much time and excellent healing, I can proudly say, "I've got wood!" and not be ashamed or embarrassed by that. It now is erotic and sensual and sacred. This I celebrate! That is spelled with an "r" in the middle, you might have noticed!

Blessed Be
Trent
http://www.youtube.com/trentdeerhorn
www.deerhornshamanic.com

Wet Dreams

Yup, you guessed it....more rain. Sometimes I find that the water level of the weather is too much. But I am not here to write about the weather...this time. Check out the title.

So here it is. Water is the element of emotions, the soul and of dreaming. The more we come into the complete understanding of this, the more we can align ourselves with the water element. The more we align ourselves with the water element, the better we become at dreaming. Check out my youtube video on Dream Walking at http://www.youtube.com/trentdeerhorn .

Someone asked me the other day if having an erotic dream about someone is considered to be dream stalking. The answer to that question is a little complicated. Dreaming is not fantasizing. Fantasy is an escape from reality for stress relief (clubbing your boss over the head with a sledge hammer), for entertainment (Hey, my super hero name is Aquafart!), or as a way of accessing the day dream aspect of the dream weave. The latter can blend into the dream time action.

Not everyone has lucid dreaming capabilities. So to find oneself in an erotic dream when you have not directed yourself to dream that usually means that you are working out some other issues that have nothing to do with the other person or persons in the dream. That does not mean that you aren't necessarily sharing the dream with the other person, but that is more rare. If you are, it may mean that they are dream stalking you, but that is also rare.

If you went into the dream with the intent of having an erotic moment with someone you know, or know of, then this becomes the shady area of dream stalking. Better to just keep that stuff to the fantasy level and not take it into the dream level. That way you are not hurting anyone. After all, there are no thought police.....yet. Sometimes a wet dream is simply a wet dream. There is no need to over analyse it or drive yourself crazy with guilt and shame. We get enough guilt and shame on a daily basis without doing that to ourselves anyway.

And yes, straight folks sometimes have homosexual and lesbian dreams. This is also normal. This is about the masculine and feminine energies aligning with each other within. It means nothing more than that. To get all bent out of shape about something like that is to once again twist oneself into knots. Believe it or else, sometimes homosexual and lesbian people have STRAIGHT DREAMS! It goes both ways. So not to worry folks, it is all good.

Okay, so I have probably tweaked a lot of triggers for people with this one, but what the heck...it needed to be written.

Blessed Be
Trent
http://youtube.com/trentdeerhorn
www.deerhornshamanic.com

The Sun's Flare

Okay, so it is a celestial event and the photo is courtesy of Space Weather News. I think that it is totally cool that we can catch a glimpse of this stuff and not have be right where it is 10 Billion degrees. It turns out that this photo caught something else as well.....can you see it? Look at the bottom right hand tip of the flare. And then look at the left hand base of the flare. Let me know what you see....

This is our sun's flare. If I had a son I would hope that he would have just as much flare about him. People often think of this flare thing as a detriment when it comes to boys and men. It is, however, the flare in the personality that expresses creative genius. I would have appreciated it so much more if my father had shown the least bit of interest in, say, my artistic flare. Instead he ignored my art and tolerated my music and, if he showed up, was bored to death at any play or musical I was in. Whah! Whah! Whah!

Who cares? I know I did when I was a kid, but I learned to live with his redneck ways and simply continued to pursue the arts regardless of his beliefs or attitudes. Sometimes what really makes a man is his being able to do what he is driven to do regardless of his own father's disdain. I am not saying that I am who I am because of him. That would give him way too much credit. I am, however, who I am despite his influences. We all have a choice as to who we are and in what we have interest. How we express ourselves develops as a result of the choices we make and the passions that we pursue.

So, my faithful readers....GO NUCLEAR! Create a flare for life itself! Allow yourselves to express your creative flare no matter what it is or what it is about!

Blessed Be
Trent
http://www.youtube.com/trentdeerhorn
www.deerhornshamanic.com

It's A Three Ring Circus!

When circus elephants are very young they are chained to an unmoveable post. They come to understand that it is useless to try to escape. As they get older, the elephant keepers are able to switch the post to a stick in the ground. As soon as the elephant feels the tension on the chain, it stops and rests and doesn't even bother to check out the strength of the anchor because it has already imprinted on its memory that it is futile to try to escape the bonds.

People are a lot like elephants. Our lives spin in circles and we think that we have to play along with the bonds and chains that others think we need in our lives. What we actually need to do is become more adventuresome and test things out on a regular basis. Who knows? Perhaps I actually do like honey dew mellon dipped in chocolate! Perhaps I don't. I never really know until I try it out. I can't really trust what anyone else will tell me about it because that is simply their opinion. Why limit ourselves to other people's opinions of who we are and what we like? Safety? No that is not safety. That is compliance.

Elephants are massive and strong and they don't even recognize how incredibly free they could be if they tested the boundaries. Humans are a lot like elephants. We are bigger and stronger and more phenomenal than we ever give ourselves credit for. Yet, once challenged by life itself, we start to awaken to the new possibilities of who we are and of what we are capable.

Challenge the boundaries every day. Try new things and discover stuff about yourself that you never before thought possible. Have a sense of adventure and a sense of humor. Live life to the fullest in every single moment of the day.

Blessed Be
Trent
http://www.youtube.com/trentdeerhorn
www.deerhornshamanic.com

Dad

When you are very young you look up to your dad. Literally, he is much taller and bigger, like a giant. Sometimes that giant is friendly and sometimes more removed. The lucky ones have one that is not an angry giant most of the time. The not so lucky ones learn skills in coping with the anger from someone who is physically huge in comparison.

I have wanted most in my life to be the friendly giant in my children's lives. There have, admittedly, been moments when that has not happened. I have worked hard at helping my children to know safety in my presence so that they always will know that in tough times they can turn to me.

I have been that little kid looking up at the giant and being unsure as to whether or not it was safe to proceed. I have not ever wanted my kids to feel that way. I have also been the giant looking down at those wee little people with the big, trusting eyes and experiencing the melting of my heart in a way that can never truly be adequately described. I have always been aware that, one day in the distant future, these are the people who will, hopefully, care for me in my old age. I truly hope that they will care, otherwise I will not have done a very good job of being a dad.

When we can allow our relationships with our children flow and develop as they need the relationship to develop, we become the adaptable parent. We can let go of our strict roles and allow ourselves to simply be present to them and for them. That way the love is always there and the respect grows with that love. Then, hopefully, when the time comes that they really need our help, they will naturally turn to us.

Blessed Be
Trent
http://www.youtube.com/trentdeerhorn
www.deerhornshamanic.com

Self Portraits

When I was in grade 10 I would do a lot of the art in our art class for my buddy, who really struggled with art in general. He did have some hidden talent, which, by the end of the year became evident as his art really became quite good. Initially, however, he was very intimidated by the daunting task of drawing. So any time we had to draw something he would "work on it at home" and the two of us would get together and I would draw for him, which came in extremely useful for him when it came to the self portrait. All that was fine and good, except that the teacher was giving him higher marks than she was giving me! Same artist (incognito) but different grades just did not compute in my 15 or 16 year old brain. Then I over heard her tell him that she loved his Western styled shirts. So from then on I wore Western styled shirts to my art classes. Lo and behold, my grades skyrocketed!

There is an awareness that I have had since then that I have become a bit of a chameleon when it comes to relating to others, especially those of whom I have considered to be in a position of authority. In my mid-twenties I was actually nick named "Chameleon" by my English professor who could not help but notice that I would show up to class each day looking completely different than the previous times. For me, it all depended on what I was doing after class. But unless you had an "in" on my life back then, it would just seem like I was a fashion Deva. Anything from a three piece suit to shorts and a tank top was on the menu.

The thing is that we all go through changes in our self-portraits. Who we were even last week is not necessarily who we have become by this week. We all have said and done things that we deeply regret, but we can't hold ourselves in a state of guilt or shame just because we made a mistake. We simply have to strive to become better representations or portraits of ourselves. Dr. Tom, in the series Being Erica, said in a recent episode, "Act the way you'd like to be and soon you'll be the way you act." I would like to think that everyone has second and even third chances. When we become soulful and mindful, we recognize when we have strayed from out paths. We are then able to get ourselves back on those paths, even if in our straying we have caused ripple effects of harm. I know that I have harmed some people in the past and I regret that. Some of that harm has been able to be repaired, if those involved are willing to allow me to try to fix it. If they are not, however, I have had to work on repairing it within myself, regardless of their active or inactive participation. I decided long ago to not live my life in regret, so I don't allow others to hold me in guilt or shame just because they are not mature enough to allow the healing to be activated. So hopefully in the work that I do on myself I am able to ripple that healing energy to them as well. Whether or not they are willing to receive it is completely up to them.

In the meantime, I am working, continually, on revising my self portrait to include everything from the spiritual to the sensual and everything in between!

Blessed Be
Trent
http://www.youtube.com/trentdeerhorn
www.deerhornshamanic.com