Notes from my Conversation with a Shaman

“Do you remember your purpose?” he asked me point blank. A little surprised by his question I knew exactly what he meant. “No” I nodded my head. “You’ve forgotten. You need to wake up. You need to wake up and remember who you are and why you are here." 

Those are the words that keep coming back to me even a month after the conversation I had with a Shaman in Guatemala. I’ve never been one to give too much credence to the stars -- the Indian horoscope that my mother forced me to get still sits somewhere in her dresser, never having been translated from Sanskrit.  Yet, something moved me to meet with a humble Shaman skilled in the Mayan horoscope.  All I shared was my date of birth and a curiosity of what all he might come up with. Not really looking for anything particular but still wanting to take advantage of all that came my way, I tried to stay open to any lessons I could learn from this.

The penetrating hazel eyes of this gentle man appeared to penetrate deep into my soul.  Sitting across a table, he circled three numbers on a complex looking chart that he had drawn on a piece of paper: 16 for the material world; 21 for the mental world; and 26 for the spiritual world. “You don’t care about the material world and are naturally inclined towards the spiritual world.” I nodded. He continued on, “You constantly struggle with this duality between the material and the spiritual. Until you find the balance, it will be hard for you to progress. In reality there’s no duality, it’s all maya -- an illusion. The good and the bad, the right and the wrong, the light and the dark are all an illusion.”    

Lake Panajachel, Guatemala

“According to the Mayan beliefs before we are born, we decide exactly where we’re going to be born, who our parents will be, and what purpose we want to fulfill in this lifetime. You had decided that you were going to work on some negative karma from your past life that you were carrying. You decided to work hard your entire life. There will be no free lunch for you. You will work for everything until the day you pass on. You made that decision for yourself.” Incidentally, this wasn’t the first time I was hearing this. “If you overcome any negativity that comes to you from others with love, it will bring them to a different vibration. You work with your hands -- you were a doctor in your past life. Your job is to heal yourself and others in your community. When you are in the space of love, you are connected to the first Shaman woman and can create miracles in life.” I wasn’t exactly sure what he meant by this, but he went on.  “In this life, you work with technology, like computers. You need to pay attention to your intuitions. You’ve lived 65 lives before and are ready for transmutation into the next world."  "You have to stop fighting with yourself,” he repeated.

We talked for an hour and a half. I listened intently without giving him any other information about myself.  The Shaman revealed truth after truth about me and the universe. I have to admit that I wasn’t sure what to make of a lot of this. And yet there were many things that made some things “click” within me, almost like finding a piece of the puzzle that you had all along but now you can see exactly how it fits. At the least, it was an excuse to have a really insightful conversation with a wise elder. :)

At the end, he wrote down on the piece of paper in front of me: “El camino spiritual es la base de la solucion.”  And explained, “the spiritual way is the base for your solutions. You need to meditate.”
 :-)