Understanding Therapy

For years My friend Cole and I have talked about a thing we call "Understanding Therapy" which essentially relies on a certain style of empathy that requires one to intuitively 'feel like' another person to 'understand' what they are experiencing so that you may help them to decode the experience from another perspective.

Here is an excerpt of an article by Micheal Erlewine explaining this same 'healing method' from the shamanistic paradigm.

"...the shaman is able to... (display) signs of experience that the client can recognize and acknowledge as true. Once the client understands that he or she is not alone, and that the experience of the shaman in fact encompasses their own experience, they can submit to allowing the shaman to lead them out of their current predicament and on toward another place—one hopefully more comfortable for them. The act of realizing that they are not alone, and that someone else has had similar experiences, is often a key step for a client in this process..."

I believe we all can learn to heal each other through this method of deep understanding.

Reading the Shaman Stones

So you’d like to learn an easy method for divination? Casting stones is one of the oldest and simplest methods of divination still in practice today. I have used this method for a number of years, always with pleasing accuracy.

This type of reading is excellent for revealing our blind spots and for insight into areas of life we usually to avoid. It is also possible to look at a snapshot in time, but free will and "the Butterfly Effect" insure that predicting the future is difficult. At any rate, my teachers tell me, "we have to learn to deal with our present before anything else."

7 ordinary stones, a bit of cloth and a pendulum will be your tools. Follow this link to learn how to select and prepare your stones. Follow this link to learn to use the pendulum.

Have the querrant hold the stones in their left hand and think of a question or a specific area of their life for which they want guidance. A question can focus the reading, allowing you to give more specific answers.

Write down the question, or if they request insight into a specific area of their life, write that down in the form of a question. If they don’t have a question, tell them to choose one stone from their hand and let that represent the theme for the reading or just ask Spirit to show the client what they need to know..

Begin by having them gently roll, or spill the stones onto the cloth or leather.

You will try to read the lines and groupings like sentences. It may be necessary to repeat the sentences aloud 2 or 3 different ways, changing the emphasis and order of the words until the answer feels right. Trust your intuition to help you.

First notice which stones are closest to the querrant. Which are in the middle? What are their meanings? Ask the querrant if this seems significant.

Next, consider any stones that are grouped together or touching each other. These may represent important themes for the reading.

Next, check to see if any of the stones are lined-up in straight, curved or diagonal lines, (even if they are far apart across the leather form).

Also, consider the over-all shape or pattern made by the stones and ask the querrant if they can see any thing – you will sometimes imagine a number, a letter, perhaps a bird, or another recognizable shape. Ask if this shape is significant.

If something is unclear, use your pendulum to ask your intuition for clarification.

Here is how the sample reading above would be interpreted:

· West is the closest stone to the querrant indicating that the theme of the reading is communication.

· Moon + North + F&F are grouped together (almost touching). This could mean that the querrant could feel a subconscious pull toward more “spiritual” pursuits.

· Sun + North + F&F + East aligned may mean that the querrant's family life will take on an aspect of spiritual growth.

· Health + F&F + Moon + West reveals that the querrrant should talk about their emotional health with their friends and family.

· The spread seems to symbolize an airplane, which could literally mean air travel or metaphorically that things are about to “take-off.”