Balancing Act

We live in a society that sees accomplishments as testimonies of worth. This is messed up. We have parents racing around getting kids to several different activities after school and on weekends, most often in different directions and opposite sides of the city, we have workaholics who pressure themselves to make just one more sale, and we have road rage increasing on a daily basis.

Isn't it nice to know that there are other options? We can choose to balance ourselves and stay balanced instead of having a hectic life that burns us out. This little goat is one that lives at the zoo. This little guy really has the right idea. It is all about balance. And when we achieve that balance, we are able to have our needs met. When our needs are met we are then able to have energy for the things that we enjoy in life. And when we have that energy we glow. It is not a baaaaaad thing!

Blessed Be

Trent

We Are One

When I was growing up, I used to absolutely love braiding my sisters' hair. I have three older sisters, and I am sure that I did this to each of them at one time or another, but to my youngest older sister the most. She had long beautiful hair and I would just love to run it through my fingers and braid it. I even did this for a few of her friends, or at least they sat through it for me. Later on in life, this got expressed when I was able to work at a friend's beauty parlor, washing clients' hair and preparing them for the cut and/or color and/or curl etc that my friend was about to do for them.

I never got to braid any clients' hair. That was okay with me, because by that time I had girlfriends who liked to have me do stuff to their hair for them. Now, I have two beautiful daughters who now and then let me braid their hair. Sometimes they ask me to do this for them, but most often I have to ask if they will let me. One of them really likes the variety of hair styles that I can create with braids.

So why the braids? I don't know. At least I didn't know back when my minor obsession first manifested in my life. The braiding process is something that I find to be meditative. It is something that makes me slow down. As I slow down, my heart rate slows and I feel calm and serene inside. But now I also understand the deeper meanings of braids. Besides the function of keeping the hair out of the eyes and face, braids are also expressions of who we are. When a woman wears a braid, the style of braid says something about her personality. I could go on for a while on this one, but I won't because there is one more thing about the braid that is even more important.

A braid is the living expression of the interwoven nature of the universe.

Hmmmm.....what the heck is this shaman dude getting at?

The braid, like us, depends on all the parts. First off, you need a clean parting of the hair. Then you need the style or pattern of the braid. Then you need to be able to weave it together so that it strengthens through the weave, and doesn't just wimp out and fall apart. You can work several braids into each other, so that it becomes like several different rivers flowing into one large river. Each strand of hair, each group, and each braid make a beautiful expression of the interdependent and interwoven nature of all things. We all rely upon other things in order to survive. When one thing collapses, it sends out a ripple effect and other things begin to collapse if we have not repaired the first thing. The next thing you know, there is a cascade effect and the entire thing comes undone and unravels everywhere. Life is like that. So these are some of the things that I think about as I braid hair. Not that deep at all, just different. And it is much better than having to count "knit one, purl one".

Blessed Be

Trent

www.deerhornshamanic.com

Life is Fragile

Some of the most beautiful things in life don't last. A flower, a sunset, a smile. I find that humans are the ones who tend to destroy beauty in nature. We plow down forests to make room for highways, level mountains to put up cities, and create noisy play toys to use in rivers and lakes that are otherwise peaceful. I remember being horrified at seeing the peacocks at the zoo being chased by kids who only wanted to pull their beautiful tail feathers out of them. Their parents didn't seem to think that there was anything wrong with their kids terrorizing these beautiful creatures. How would they like to be left bald because someone decided that it would be fun to collect their hair follicles? Try attracting a mate in that state!

Life itself can be quite fragile. Whether we are "losing our feathers" or just happen to be in the way of something or someone else at the wrong time, things can get broken. It is amazing how many broken people there are out there in the world. We don't always recognize them as being broken. Some are very good at masking how they feel. Some are very good at hiding what happens to them every day. You don't have to be a bald peacock to be broken and battered. Have you ever had one of those days where, for a variety of reasons, you are just more sensitive to stuff around you than usual? These are the days when meaningless off hand remarks can hurt us deeply. Nobody really means to cause us harm, they just do because we are more sensitive that day and they are not sensitive enough to know that what they are saying might sting.

We need, on days like these, to be gentle with ourselves. We need to remind ourselves that we are capable of going with the flow and that not everything in the world is directed at ourselves. We need to understand that gentleness and fragility are two different things. We might be fragile, but if we can bring ourselves to be gentle with ourselves and with others, then we decrease the likelihood of hurting ourselves or anyone else. In fact, our gentleness can turn out to be our greatest strength. When we are gentle, fewer things actually intimidate or frighten us. And when something or someone tries to, then we gently pass it by and keep going on our way. We don't have to fight or even fight back, we simply move on and leave whatever the situation is to its own self-destruction. In the meantime, we continue to grow our feathers back so that, one day, some way, we can once again fly.

Blessed Be

Trent

www.deerhornshamanic.com

Making Favorites

A few years ago I was at a wake. I have been writing a lot about death lately, but please bear with me. So I was at this wake. This was a wake for a dear friend of mine. She unfortunately passed as a result of complications in her struggle to heal cancer. This woman was one of the most gracious people I have ever known.

Now, I have never been one who likes to make favorites. I think we get a lot of that when growing up and I don't think that it is fair. Yes, we can love people in completely different ways, but making someone your favorite child or friend or parent or grandparent etc sets everyone up for being hurt in the long run. Some people are very blatant about the fact that "He's my favorite son" or whatever the relationship might be. This hurts the others in their lives. Or so I thought, until this wake happened.

People got up to speak about my friend. They introduced themselves as her favorite nephew, 1st daughter, younger daughter, mailman, uncle and the list went on and on. I found myself getting up to the mic and saying that I was her favorite shaman, which brought a lot of laughter. But the thing is, it was true and I know in my heart that it is true of every person there.

This was a woman who, without "making favorites," made everyone in her life feel like they were literally her favorite. This was a huge gift that she gave everyone in her life and that will continue to flow and ripple throughout the world as a result of her sacred path. I feel so honored that I was able to feel that from her. I feel that everyone in that very packed hall at the wake must surely feel the same way as well.

For this I am grateful.

Blessed Be

Trent

www.deerhornshamanic.com

Butterflies and Unicorns

Some things need to be believed in order to be seen. We have such strong filter systems on our perceptions that something can be right there in front of us and we just won't see it. I have a syndrome that I call the Y Chromosome Deficiency Syndrome. Being a male person, as many male persons experience, I usually cannot see something that I am looking for in the cupboard, in the closet, on the computer desk, in the "drawer of all things," in the "box of all things", and the list will go on. It usually takes an X Chromosome person to be able to find it for me. And, voila!, there it was, exactly where she told me it would be. Sometimes (okay most often) it leaves me feeling like quite the fool. The thing is that I cannot be too hard on myself about this because it is a serious disorder. Really! It is!

In Brooks, Alberta, there is an O'Shea's restaurant and in this restaurant there is a display of beautiful stained glass, one of which is a unicorn. I looked up, saw it, and said to my Love,"Hey, check out that unicorn!" She actually saw it. That was the first time that I had ever said those words and had someone actually see what I was talking about! Fortunately for her, and for me, this one was in this dimension of reality and was right there for any mortal to see. You would not believe the looks I get when stained glass is not involved! The thing is, I believe in unicorns. No, I don't brake for unicorns and hobbits, but I will slow down and give them a chance to move on. Because I believe in unicorns I am able to see them. The filters that society tried to put on my mind got lost in the shuffle somewhere while I was struggling to escape.

So now there is a beautiful butterfly effect that takes place. I can flip in consciousness from one dimension to the other and stay grounded in this one at the same time. Very cool indeed. Perhaps being from the Butterfly clan helps me. We in the Butterfly Clan are very used to shifts and changes within ourselves and cope very well with shifts and changes in our world. What we have to do, though, is honour where we are developmentally in any given situation. Are we in the egg form? The larva stage? The caterpillar stage? The cocoon stage? The butterfly/moth stage? When we honour which stage of development we are in, we no longer force ourselves to try to be in a different stage and just flow with the stage that exists. That way, we get out of our own way as we develop on our earth walk now.

Blessed Be

Trent

www.deerhornshamanic.com

The Masks We Wear

We all wear different masks at different times of the day. We wear a mask at work, and one at home, and one with our families of origin, and one with our life partners and one with our children and the list goes on and on. These masks are not, however, necessarily a bad thing that keeps people from getting to know us, nor are they always used to keep bad things at bay.

I like to look at the different masks as expressions of a variety of things we can all be. They are descriptions of who we are and they are not all mutually exclusive. For example,parents sometimes neglect being physically demonstrative in front of their children because they think that they have to protect them from knowing about sex. Yet sex is a part of love and is a part of what actually brought these children into being. Those children whose parents were more demonstrative tend to be the ones who later in life have a much healthier sex life with their partners. We all need physical connection. It is only human and only natural.

So when we wear our masks, we need to look at them as expressions, not as methods of hiding who we really are. The ones that are designed to hide who we are eventually get pulled right off our faces anyway. But when we allow people to see us change our masks and express ourselves in a variety of ways, we then give them permission to be a variety of things themselves, which frees them from social bindings that imprison them. So go ahead...express yourself!

Blessings

Trent

www.deerhornshamanic.com

Only Natural

Animals know what they need and they tend to know when they need it. Once they know, they do whatever is necessary to achieve the goal. Humans can learn a lot from animals when it comes to responding to basic needs. I know someone who is continually not going to the washroom because she is too busy to take the time. The amount of damage that she is doing to her body over time is unthinkable. Thank heavens they have come out with Depends because, if she doesn't curb her behaviour and start responding to her body's needs, she will need them.

Ah, the life of a cat. Our cat inspires me. Who doesn't want to lay in the spot of sunlight and have a cat nap in the middle of the afternoon? Now that is responding to the basic needs of the body. Like our cat, I tend to have a siesta in the middle of the afternoon. After lunch, I take a 10-20 minute nap. It doesn't have to be in the sun, but it does have to be uninterrupted. That way I am able to recharge my batteries. I am the type who can be asleep as soon as the eyes close. In fact, I have to be careful how long a blink lasts! So I go very deep very quickly and then come out of sleep just as quickly. My thoughts are clearer and my energies are higher. This allows me to be on top of things and function much better. My mother made sure that I napped every day when I was young. Sometimes she regretted the decision because she wanted me to be doing something else. But I am so glad that she gave me that gift. With so many people who struggle to sleep, I feel blessed that not only am I able to but that I can do so in the middle of the afternoon and not have it disrupt my night time sleep.

Sometimes I am dreaming within seconds of closing my eyes. Dreams are an important part of my reality. They help me to process events in my life and they give me guidance on pressing issues in my life. I think that because I am an avid dreamer, I am able to see things with more clarity than perhaps someone who does not remember their dreams might. Dreams give us insights and with those insights we are able to respond to our lives and the people in them with greater ease.

Blessed Be

Trent

www.deerhornshamanic.com