Jade Wah’oo Grigori,
Guest
Waking Times
I will begin this article with two fundamental descriptive
definitions of Spirit and Soul. So very often I hear people speak of
Spirit and Soul interchangeably; at other times I find that when
discussing Spirit and Soul we are using fully different references,
resulting in confusion.
The definitions that follow are, for the sake of clarity, what I mean when using the terms Spirit or Soul.
SPIRIT
Spirit is pure, eternal and non-corruptible. Awareness is the nature
of Spirit. The essence of Spirit is frequency. In manifest form it is
expressed as light and resonance. As the frequency of Spirit
interpenetrates a field of life force (Soul) it sets that field
resonating in a range of vibratory patterns that are made manifest as
matter. Awareness in manifest form is expressed as Consciousness.
SOUL
Soul is comprised of life force and carries the imprint of experience
and intent that is imparted to it by Spirit and the Body/Mind
consciousness. This imprint is carried from lifetime to lifetime, though
not always in conscious memory. Soul-force is mutable, that is it can
be affected upon to be either life-positive or life-negative. This
alteration occurs as a consequence of life experiences that may bring
forth either joy or pain. Joy is the direct felt-experience of Spirit’s
activation of our life force moving and pulsing through our body. When
we act, choose or are influenced in a manner that is contradictory to
our Spirit’s purpose we experience pain.
SPIRIT AND SOUL
An investigation into the nature of the Soul is paramount in our
understanding of how we can most effectively come into alignment with
our Spirit’s desire. The function of the Soul is to guide and direct the
Body/Mind consciousness, the ego, into a path of life that allows for
the Spirit to best express itself. Spirit impels the Soul as to the
direction it needs to take. The natural impelling drive of the Soul is
towards change, movement and growth in attunement with the Spirit’s
desire. This drive is experienced by every one of us as Death. That is,
to the invested ego-consciousness any movement towards change, a
relinquishment of the status quo of our attitudes and cherished beliefs,
is perceived by the Body/Mind consciousness as an impending death. When
the impelling drive of the Soul towards change is thwarted by our
entrenched attitudes and attachments the force of that drive rebounds
upon itself, now coming forth as a compulsion to suicide. By suicide I
do not necessarily mean an overt and conscious attempt to kill one’s
self, but rather a panoply of self-destructive behaviors and conditions
arise, for the Soul will have its way, even if it means removing the
current Body/Mind out of the picture in order to provide the Spirit with
another chance, through incarnation in a new life, in order to proceed
with the Spirit’s desire to bring it’s purpose forth in manifest
expression. An example of this drive of the Soul to affect change, and
what happens when that change is denied by our Body/Mind, may help to
elucidate this information: When we are in a situation where we have
acted in contradiction to our Spirit’s desire, we experience a twang of
conscience. When we suppress the message that conscience conveys, ignore
it and carry on in spite of it, then we feel shame and guilt.
Conscience is the Soul acting upon our Consciousness to bring alignment
with our Spirit back into balance. Guilt and shame are the consequences
of Soul denied.
Imagine the three Souls as being one side of a hinge, the Body and
Mind comprising the matching other side of that hinge. When the Souls
and Body/Mind are in alignment with each other the hinge pin of the
Spirit can fit through, allowing the hinge to serve its intended
purpose. If something is out of alignment, whether it be the Body, the
Mind or one of the Souls, the hinge pin may still fit through, but the
hinge squeaks and creaks. In these situations there will be dysfunction
in the corresponding arena of the person’s life. If a hinge piece is
missing or bent way out of center, the pin of Spirit is unable to fit
through. When this occurs there will be the resultant disability of the
individual’s life and experience and incapability of function in that
area of life. This is not a black and white situation. The affected
person may function quite fine intellectually, for example, but be fully
dysfunctional emotionally.
Every
person has their own Spirit’s path. The choices we make, as well as the
circumstances that befall us in life, and how we handle them, determine
our alignment with our Spirit’s path. Poor choices and unfortunate
situations of violation and the disrespect of our sanctity, the
manipulations allowed by us in our state of not knowing better, divert
us from harmonious congruence with our Spirit’s calling. To the degree
that we diverge from our path we create a separation between our life
and spiritual calling. It is in the gap between our life and Spirit that
dysfunction, disease and despair find fertile ground. Soul seeks to
draw us back into alignment with that path. When we experience those
difficulties and impediments in our life, when we are plagued with
misfortune, ill health and dysfunction, these are often indicators that
we are out of alignment with our Souls’ Calling. The appropriate resolve
is to bring our life, through our choices, into a greater alignment
with our Spirit’s purpose. When we can recognize the course that our
life would follow were we to surrender into the Soul’s movement to bring
about change, we are in a greater awareness of what the purpose of our
Spirit might be.
THE SOUL’S DESIGN
We have three Souls, or aspects of one Soul. They are the Earth,
Underworld and Celestial Souls. The Earth Soul is the one that we
communicate with on a day-to-day basis and is the residing place of our
short-term memory. With this Soul we make connections in a logical
manner, recognizing patterns and associations and grounding these
perceptions into the Body/Mind as conscious awareness. The Underworld
Soul, or Dream Soul, is the Soul from which we dream. As our senses shut
down at night our attentions shifts into the Dream Soul. Our remembered
experiences of this Soul and its activities are what are translated to
us in the waking state as dreams. It is within the Underworld Soul that
we store our life force that we generate each and every day. This charge
of life force, or Power, as we refer to it Shamanically, resonates with
our thoughts, feelings, impressions, experiences and perceptions; that
is, memories. The Underworld Soul is the place where our long-term
memories are stored. Our Celestial Soul is the High Self through which
we receive spiritual guidance and direction in our lives. When our
attention is moved into the Celestial Soul we experience flying dreams,
dreams of the transcendental and visions which alter our perceptions of,
and approaches to, life forevermore.
LOSS OF SOUL
Trauma, neglect of our basic needs, the experience of not being
received into the world with honor and joy, loss of consciousness, such
as in a blow to the head or severe black-outs due to drugs and alcohol,
all can instigate a condition we recognize as a loss of the Soul. When
we exist in life with an aspect of our Soul disconnected or missing we
suffer the consequential disruptions and difficulties that arise from
being only partially ‘here’. The nature of the specific dysfunction is
determined by which Soul has departed.
When
the Earth Soul leaves the person experiences melancholy, being
ungrounded, unable to fully make logical connections between events and
data, and a strong sense of not being whole. Short-term memory is
hazardous; the individual chronically forgetful, unable to remember the
name of a person just met, where the keys to the car are placed, unable
to recall the message of the last paragraph just read. When the Earth
Soul is gone the Underworld Soul moves from its native position in the
Dream Realm and takes up residence in the place of the Earth Soul. As a
consequence the individual often finds that life’s daily events take on a
dream-like quality, as if one were moving through a theatre production.
Walking into a social situation the person whose Earth Soul has been
replaced by the Dream Soul has an overwhelming intuitive understanding
of the mythic dynamics of the interactions they are greeted with. Minor
events take on connotations of high significance. While we all have
moments of this type of perceptual capability, the person whose Earth
Soul is missing must live in the non-ordinary world each and every
moment and usually finds it very disconcerting.
If it is the Underworld Soul that is disconnected or missing the
symptoms are very distinct from that of a person’s experience of their
Earth Soul being gone. As the Underworld Soul is the point of attention
from which we dream, the person has dream difficulty. This difficulty
may be an inability to recall dreams, or having no dreams at all. Dreams
may be disturbing, dreams of being chased, imprisoned, tortured, lost
and adrift, unable to find one’s way back home. As the Underworld Soul
is the storehouse of our Power, when that Soul is out of sync we no
longer have easy access to the life force stored there. (This is rather
like having money in your bank account, but you have lost your ATM card
and can no longer readily withdraw what you need to survive.) As a
result we are lacking in energy to accomplish life’s daily tasks, can’t
seem to get the passion fired up, living in a state of malaise. Neither
do we have the life force charge to maintain our health; we become
susceptible to colds, the flu, infections and the like. It is this life
force field that resonates with emotive thoughts, feelings, experiences
and impressions: the stuff of memories. When the Underworld Soul is in a
state of disconnect we suffer from long-term memory loss. Specific
chunks of our past may be blank or hazy when we consider them.
Our Celestial Soul, through which we receive spiritual guidance and
direction in the unfoldment of our lives, carries the blueprint of who
we are in this life. The Celestial Soul imparts the direct desire of the
Spirit into our field of consciousness. The Celestial Soul can also be
called upon to act in our favor, recreating the circumstances and events
of our lives in accordance with our intent. However, it can only do so
when given a clear directive, as in a vow. An example of this is “I
choose radiant and vibrant health!” With this statement of intentful
desire the High Self can then engage the forces of Creation to bring
them into alignment with that desire. The Celestial Soul awaits such
direction. Its fulfillment comes in responding to our desire. In order
for the High Soul to be able to respond, though, requires that we state
clearly and unequivocally our intent. If we state: “I want to be happy”
the Celestial Soul cannot act, for all we have done is engage in wishful
thinking. What we may want is not the same always as that which we
choose. And, in addition, when we use the phrase ‘to be’, we are putting
our desire out there some other time in the future. “I want to be
happy,” begs the question of “When?” We must make our communication with
our High Self in a positively phrased statement free of ambiguity,
grounded in the present moment. Conversely, to say “I am happy!” as if
by stating our desire like it is already true, well, that is just plain
lying. The response of the Soul to our lies is to withdraw, leaving us
worse off than before.
In
the contemporary cultures of today’s world we are not taught the proper
usage of language for commune with our Soul, if such a concept even
exists! The original intent and purpose of the gift of Language is for
intimate commune with our own Soul, a means of bridging the chasm that
exists between Body/Mind consciousness and Awareness. Next then is
Language a vehicle for communing between your Soul and mine and
another’s. Only somewhere way down the line is Language intended as a
way of transmitting data and information. Unfortunately the tables have
been turned so that the emphasis, nay, the only use of language, is to
convey mere data. To reclaim this knowledge, and put it into practice,
is to reclaim our rightful heritage as spiritual beings!
SOUL RETRIEVAL
When, through trauma or neglect, the Earth Soul departs from
integration with the other two Souls, becomes disanchored from the
Body/Mind, it tends to stay here in the earthly domain, in the realm of
physical construct. In essence it becomes a ghost. Almost always the
Earth Soul will retreat to a place, an environs, in which the person had
come to associate a feeling of safety, acceptance and security. This
might be a tree that as a child the individual would climb high into to
‘get away from it all’, a favorite creek-side ‘special place’ where no
one would find freedom from being bothered. Or the Earth Soul may find
that place of security in Gramma’s house, away from the turmoil and
abuse of our parental home. For some, who come into utero and find
violence and rage awaits them; they may even retreat back into the
‘In-Between Place’ between one incarnation and the next. Wherever the
person identifies as ‘safe’, the Earth Soul will go.
Rehabilitation of the Earth Soul back into integration with the other
Souls and the Body/Mind requires that the Soul first be located. As the
Soul that is lost has not matured beyond the age at which it departed,
it must be entreated with care, so as to not frighten it. It must be
lovingly convinced that it is safe to go home. When rapprochement has
been reached between the Soul Retriever and the Earth Soul itself,
arrangements must then be made with the Spirits who have been taking
care of the lost Soul. Very frequently the caretaker Beings have adopted
the Soul as one of their own. It is with both joy, in seeing that the
Soul will finally get to return to its rightful place of being, and
sadness, at the leaving from their midst a loved one, that these Earth
Spirits find themselves. Offerings and vows, on behalf of the person who
is experiencing the reintegration, to maintain a healthy continued
contact with these loving Beings, are necessarily made. With a full and
complete reintegration brought forth, the person, once disconnected and
spacey, will immediately begin to feel whole and present
.
Retrieval of the Underworld Soul brings with it its own unique set of
variables. When the Underworld Soul is slammed out of sync, again
through trauma, abuse, loss of consciousness, the death of a close and
loved companion or family member, or anything which will thrust one into
a state of shock, it departs into the realm of Dream. The Dream World’s
essence is that of symbol, myth and correlative significance. When we
are dreaming everything that transpires is quite real to us. It is only
upon awakening that we, sometimes with a swipe of the brow and a sigh of
relief, are able to declare that ‘it was just a dream’. Whilst in the
dream, there is no such escapism. In the Dream World everything we have
engendered in life is met in its symbolic manifestation. Fears show up
as monsters, guilts as demons. The love we have brought into existence
appears as angelic beings of protection and beauty. Make no mistake
about it, these beings are real. They cannot be brushed off as fantasy
figures. A ‘demon’ or ‘advocate’ is a personal symbolic construct and is
fully responsive to, and created by, our own state of being. And there
are fully autonomous Beings in the Dream World that are not of our
personal symbolic construct. They exist as manifestations of the
collective human consciousness. A ‘Demon’ or ‘Advocate’ is an autonomous
Being of which we have very little or no control through the
restructuring of our personal psyche.
During an Underworld Soul Retrieval the Soul Retriever will locate
the lost Soul. Then, depending on where the Soul is, what it is
undergoing and in which realm of the Underworld it is found to be,
appropriate action is taken on behalf of the person to engage their
Dream Soul and embrace it so as to safely bring it back home to its
natural residing place
.
Often the Soul is just wandering, adrift in fantasies, asleep.
Sometimes the Soul is awake and adrift, often scared because it knows
that it is disconnected and can’t find its way home. In these situations
the Soul Retriever simply embraces in loving care the Soul and brings
it on home.
There are those Beings, Advocates, that keep a look out for lost
Souls. They will take in and care for these Souls, rather like an
orphanage. If this be the situation the Soul Retriever must present
their credentials (as the one who’s Soul is lost, as Shaman, or
Psychopomp) as well as the authority to be there on behalf of the
person, if it is other than one’s self. The authority I refer to is
permission given directly by the party asking for help. When credentials
and authority are presented the Advocates will release the care of the
Soul to the Soul Retriever. The Soul is then returned safely home to its
rightful place of relationship with the Body/Mind and other Souls.
There are also those entities, Demons, who keep an eye out for lost
Souls. They will track down, hunt, snare, imprison and torture the Souls
they capture. This torment is experienced in the person’s life as
emotional flare-ups and disability, outbursts of unknown sourced rage
followed by deep depressions, constant misfortune and turmoil. Those
usurpers then feed upon the emotional turmoil that is generated by the
torment of the person’s Soul. They are the vampires, not of fang and
claw, but of emotion and Soul Force. When the Soul is found to be
ensnared the Soul Retriever must then present credentials and authority.
Most often the Demons will immediately release the Soul and back off.
Sometimes, however, a Demon who has fed upon the Soul Force of many,
many unfortunate Souls and has become bloated with Power, and arrogant,
refuses to release the captured Soul. In that situation the Soul
Retriever must be able, capable and willing to be as a Warrior on behalf
of the ensnared Soul, doing whatever it takes to secure the freedom of
that Soul. What must be understood here is that what ever happens to the
Soul Retriever there, in the Dream World, happens to their own body
here in the earthly realm.
Should the Celestial Soul become loosed from the Body/Mind, death is
imminent within three days. As the Celestial Soul begins its loosening,
the individual goes into coma, drifting in and out of consciousness,
speaking of visions and meetings with the dead that others around them
are all too ready to ascribe to being hallucinations. As long as the
Earth and Underworld Souls are present, or retrievable, a person’s
Celestial Soul can be brought back and death averted.
Clearly these things I am describing, and the approaches, are not
intended to be a ‘how-to’ guide. Such a course is foolish. I am here
only seeking to bring awareness, in depth, to a topic that has very
little understanding in the world at large. These are activities for
trained professionals who are well familiar with these practices, have
the necessary spiritual back-up and lots of previous experience in
traveling in the aforementioned realms in a state of full awareness. As I
have only given reference to the basic structure of activities in
performing an authentic Soul Retrieval, to try and actually do a Soul
Retrieval from the information presented would be akin to trying to
drive a car without knowing about Stop Signs, Red lights from Green,
brakes from the gas pedal.
About the Author
Jade Wah’oo Grigori is a caretaker of ‘the Ways’, an
authentic Shamanic lineage. Raised in a Shamanic family of Mongolian
heritage, his paternal grandparents being from the Seven Villages of the
Csango People, descendants of the Mongol Golden Horde, in the
Carpathian Mountains.
Following the death of his Grampa Pena in 1982, he became the
Caretaker of ‘the Ways’, a compendium of Songs, Ceremonies, Dances,
Methods and Techniques, Approaches to Spirit and the Ways of Power. Jade
Wah’oo currently lives in Sedona, Arizona caring for his children and
being actively engaged in service to his community.
For further information or to contact Jade please visit his website at www.shamanic.net.
This article is offered under Creative Commons license. It’s okay
to republish it anywhere as long as attribution bio is included and all
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