Wisdom Rising

Sandra Ingerman On Breaking Free From Illusion, Reclaiming Joy, and Shamanic Soul Healing

• Christine Renee, Isabel Wells, and Shantel Ochoa • Season 3 • Episode 10

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Sandra Ingerman, world-renowned shamanic teacher and author, joins us for a powerful conversation about how to break free from illusion, heal soul fragmentation, and walk through darkness to reclaim joy. Drawing on over 40 years of shamanic practice, Sandra shares how the cycles of suffering we face today are echoes of the past—and how reclaiming our soul energy is the key to breaking those patterns.

In a world where our energy is scattered across hundreds of expectations, roles, platforms, and global crises, Sandra offers grounded practices for calling our Soul home, reconnecting with our true self, and rediscovering joy. She reframes darkness not as something to fear, but as a sacred initiation that reveals our deepest spiritual strength.

If you're navigating spiritual burnout, emotional overwhelm, or simply longing to feel whole again, this episode will reconnect you to what matters most—and remind you that you have the power to shift your reality.

Along the way, we discuss:

  • The illusion of life and how to break free
  • How collective struggles are repeating historical patterns
  • Life as a cosmic play: masks, roles, and lessons
  • How to break free from limiting identities and stories
  • A dream that transformed Sandra’s view of suffering
  • The energetic cost of absorbing global suffering through media
  • Practices for calling your energy and soul parts back home
  • Why following your unique path supports collective healing
  • Darkness as a necessary spiritual initiation—not something to fear
  • Grounded practices for restoring personal wholeness
  • If clairvoyance is necessary for shamanic or spiritual work
  • A powerful tool to instantly connect with your intuition
  • And so much more!

..........

Connect with Sandra:

Website: https://www.sandraingerman.com/

Walking Through Darkness: https://a.co/d/d47kRlH

Polishing the Path of the Soul: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0D6WZNDR5?ref_=cm_sw_r_ffobk_cp_ud_dp_9BBT3ZJS20EANW67VWW3_1&bestFormat=true

Shaman's Cave Podcast: https://shamanstv.com/

Moon Rising Shamanic Institute Links:
Website: https://moonrisinginstitute.com/
Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/moonrisinginstitute
Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/moonrisingmystics
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/moonrising.institute
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@moonrisinginstitute
Subscribe to the Newsletter: https://moonrisinginstitute.kit.com/spiritguide


Book a session with Isabel: https://calendly.com/into-the-deep/schedule

Book a FREE 15 minute connect call with Izzy: https://calendly.com/moonrisinginstitute/connect

Book a session with Christine: https://calendly.com/christinerenee/90-minutes-intensive

Book a FREE 10 minute connect call with Christine: https://calendly.com/christinerenee/10-minute-connect-call-srpt

Speaker 1:

It's time to remember your divine purpose and limitless potential. Welcome to Wisdom Rising, the official podcast of Moon Rising Shamanic Institute. Join shamanic Reiki practitioners Christine René, isabel Wells and Chantelle Ochoa as we guide you on a journey of radical self-discovery and spiritual guidance. Each week, we'll dance through the realms of shamanism, mysticism, energy, healing and personal development to illuminate your path to true healing and self-sourced wisdom Through weekly inspired conversations and interviews with leading spiritual and shamanic practitioners. We are here to help you acknowledge, reconcile and balance your energy so that you can awaken to the whispers of wisdom rising from within. Hello, hello and welcome back to this very special episode of the Wisdom Rising podcast. This interview has been over a year in the making and we are incredibly honored and excited to welcome Sandra Ingerman to the show today. In today's episode, we talk about how we are looping history and how to understand that everything here is an illusion, so that we can step out of the illusion to create a beautiful life. We also talk about walking the shamanic path to find joy, understanding that living life here on this earth is the same as taking part in the play of life and choosing the role that you wish to play. We'll talk about fragmenting ourselves, and how our current culture, and especially our media, calls us to separate ourselves into so many different dimensions of life, and the importance of calling all of us back home. We talk about how we can do this and why it means that we'll then be able to live a beautiful life, the importance of community letting go of fear, and Sandra's personal shamanic journey experience that allowed her to see every aspect of life as a new adventure. At the end, we also do a quick fire round with some questions that she's never been asked before. We also touch on her perspective of journeying and why, if you don't see anything when you're meditating or journeying, it doesn't mean you're doing it wrong. So if you've been asking yourself that question, be sure to listen to the very end to hear Sandra's very insightful and thought-provoking answer.

Speaker 1:

Sandra is widely recognized and credited as being one of the most influential people to keep shamanism alive in our modern Western culture and is recognized for bridging ancient cross-cultural healing methods with today's modern culture. She's taught for over 40 years, including workshops worldwide on shamanic journeying, healing and reversing environmental pollution using spiritual methods. Sandra is also a licensed marriage and family therapist, a professional mental health counselor and a board-certified expert on traumatic stress. Watkins' Body Mind Spirit magazine honored her by including her in their 100 most spiritually influential people of 2020, and she was also chosen as one of the top 10 spiritual leaders of 2013 by Spirituality and Health magazine. She was also awarded the 2007 Peace Award from the Global Foundation for Integrative Medicine.

Speaker 1:

She's authored 13 books, including her most recent books Walking Through Darkness and her audio book Polishing the Path of the Soul. We're diving deep into the topics covered in both of these books in today's interview. It was truly an honor to get to speak to Sandra in this conversation and an honor to witness her wisdom. I hope that you enjoy today's episode as much as I do and, of course, this is an invitation to get her books for yourself so you can dive even deeper into the topics we discussed today.

Speaker 1:

The links for her book Walking Through Darkness and her audiobook Polishing the Path of the Soul, as well as links to her website, are in the show notes below, and, of course, we would love to hear your top takeaways from today's episode over in our Moon Rising Shamanic Mystics Facebook group. You can join by clicking the link in the show notes, and don't forget to subscribe to the podcast so that you can get access to new episodes sooner, and share this episode with someone who needs to hear it, so we can spread this net of light and healing across the entire globe. With all of that said, let's go to the show. Hello, hello, and welcome back to another episode of the Wisdom Rising podcast. It is my great honor and joy today to be joined with Sandra Ingerman. Sandra, thank you so much for coming on the show today.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, it's a real delight, Isabel. I'm really excited about being with you today.

Speaker 1:

Beautiful. Well, obviously you need no introduction to our audience. I know they are so thrilled that they get to hear from you today, but I would love to just start, as I do with most of our podcast guests, with hearing from you your perspective on your journey. I know that's a big question, but maybe what the broad strokes are of how you got to where you are and maybe, even more importantly, what's really sparking your love and energy these days.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so I'm 72 to write an autobiography of my life and I actually can't do that because I've lived like 10 lives. In this one life I came in as a real spiritual being, really in love with nature, singing to the trees, singing to the stars, singing to the moon. I was a bookkeeper, I lived in the Haight-Ashbury, I did the whole hippie thing. So many different jobs, so many professions, a firefighter, all of this. It's like I really took the opportunity in this lifetime to just explore so many different roles that you can play in life. And so my life has been really complex on a lot of levels so it's hard to really break it down. But I really did come in as a spiritual being. I did have all the abuse that so many people have in life and, you know, grew up in a culture where there was right and wrong and you know, stick to society's rules and don't shine too bright and don't be too creative and keep your head down and things will be good. But I wasn't born with that soul, I wasn't born with that spirit. So I never let society put me down and I always just went for it and at the same time as I was loving life and loving nature and sang to nature and had all these spiritual downloads as a child, and I got hit by lightning as a child too, and so, from a shamanic point of view, that was my initiation into shamanism, which I had no elders at the time to tell me this. So I'm seeing now what I've missed from actually not having elders who helped me understand the initiation that lightning was bringing into my life. But at some point I just was looking at how miserable people were and I felt like everybody was getting life wrong, because as a kid I was just seeing flowers and colors and beauty and so much suffering on the human realm. And so I remember sitting on the couch of my house one day and saying everybody's got this wrong and I'm going to spend my life helping people find joy and helping people find what life is really about and how we can create the life that we want. The very first paper I ever wrote in high school was on manifestation how we can manifest anything that was in high school.

Speaker 2:

So I always had this spiritual drive and at the same time, when I reached puberty, I hit a real place of depression and when I looked at it as a teenager I really saw how much of the world's issues, how much suffering I had taken on into my own self and that had caused me to become extremely depressed and suicidal. And that energy stayed with me, even though I was very aware of the cause and I knew I'm a psychotherapist and I have three licenses. But I knew that psychotherapy wasn't my answer. I knew this was a spiritual issue. So as a teenager I just really well, for one thing, I grew up in the 60s so I really dove into psychedelics and drugs. But I really dove into esoteric literature to try and get an understanding and I got so much deep wisdom and understanding from that. But I didn't have a path, I didn't have a practice and in 1980, the universe kind of picked me up, put me down in a place of.

Speaker 2:

I was in a graduate school for my master's in counseling psychology and an anthropologist came out to teach a workshop.

Speaker 2:

I heard I could get two easy units if I signed up for it and I was working 60 hours a week to put myself through school.

Speaker 2:

So two easy units sounded great for me and it was a workshop on shamanic journeying and that was Halloween of 1980. I met my helping spirit, what we call in shamanism a helping spirit, and that helping spirit started answering all the questions that I had in life, and that was 44 years ago, and I've been journeying every day since I found my path and so teaching, learning, healing from my spirits and how to help people heal and in the tarot, I'm the archetype of the teacher heal and in the tarot I'm the archetype of the teacher and it really was my destiny and I just love to teach people the power of direct revelation, which is what shamanism is about how to stop giving our power away to others and how we have the ability to be able to get all the wisdom, the guidance from the divine that we need without any intermediaries. That's direct revelation, and to have that, you know, as something a personal practice that I can do and everybody can do is just such a blessing, especially for the times that we're living in right now.

Speaker 1:

Beautiful and I'm curious. This might be a bit of a broad question as well, but you spoke at the beginning about how you were seeing all of this suffering in the world and feeling like people were getting life wrong, and that it was your journey to bring more joy back in. Looking back now, what would you say is the biggest shift that you're working to?

Speaker 2:

invite into people so that they can find that joy. The biggest shift is in every spiritual tradition, in every esoteric book on the planet, it is taught that life is an illusion, that we come here to take a role. We put on a costume the body that we took and we take a particular role in life, and it's a play of life. And so when I really got that, not just intellectually, but when it really filtered down and was absorbed into all the cells of my body, I got that as a real truth that we're just here to learn and so we take on these roles in order to learn certain lessons. And so when I realized that it's like, well, yes, we get a tremendous amount of lessons from pain and suffering, but we're also here, in a play of life, to realize that we can change roles and costumes.

Speaker 2:

So, as an example of this, I had this unbelievable nightmare once. It was unbelievable, it was so long ago and it was bloody and it was violent. It was like back in Roman times where everybody had their swords out and they were cutting people up and it was just chaos. It was this gigantic war of blood limbs everywhere. That's not my thing. So then the dream changed. And all of a sudden I'm sitting in an audience and there's a stage and the main warrior he's dressed, he's still dressed in his costume, he has blood all over him and he's standing up and we're all asking him what was that like for you to play that role?

Speaker 2:

And it was such an amazing message in the stream of realizing that we put on different costumes, we put on different roles, but we're learning something as we go. And so when do we get to the point where we realize that we can move forward out of that role, we can take off that costume, move forward out of that role. We can take off that costume. We got what we needed to from that costume. Or we realize the costume role that we're playing is destructive in our life and it's our choice to take on a new role. And what would that be for you and what would that costume be for you? And that's a real turning point in my work of really just seeing where here I've always been writing and talking about how we're in earth school. But we took on a body, we play these roles and but underneath all of that, we're just these shining lights of spirit, learning here about the middle world, about living on earth.

Speaker 1:

And I'm curious in in both of your recent books you've written many, but in both of your recent books Walking Through Darkness, that you co-authored with Lynn Roberts, and your audiobook Polishing the Path of the Soul they both focus on that idea of suffering and, in this framework, of the roles that we play. How much of the suffering that we're seeing both in individual lives but also in the world right now do you think is connected with holding on to roles that we could release or move on from?

Speaker 2:

Well, because of the age I am and also knowledge of spiritual history, we're just looping. I mean we're looping, so it's really easy to see that we're still in the same play. So, for example, we know from archaeological evidence that there was nuclear war on the planet before. We know that we already did that one I grew up. When I grew up, we had air raid drills. We had to get under the desk and we had to sit in the hallway and I came home and my father would show me brochures of the bomb shelter he was going to buy to protect our family. If you look at a lot of the issues that we're dealing with, we're just simply looping. We know about all the civilizations that went extinct due to greed, power over and ruining the environment. So many civilizations went extinct already. How many times do we have to do this? So we're just doing the same thing all over again. We're just looping the same thing all over again. We're just looping. So if we're looping.

Speaker 1:

When do we make the choice inside of ourselves to stop the loop? And do you feel?

Speaker 2:

like we are destined to continue looping or do we have the chance to stop the loop and start a new path? Well, we definitely. We have the power. I try to explain to people that source is above. There is a creative force of the universe. You don't have to be religious, but in shamanism it is believed there's all different creation stories, very different from the Bible that there was a source, a loving source of creation that created the world, and so we are a seed of that because we were born from that source. So we are a seed of source. So we have that inside of us, but we're choosing to let our egos run away and run amok about all the things we're supposed to be and all the things we're supposed to do and how society will accept us or not accept us based on our behavior. But if we really honor that, we're a seed of source. We have the ability to create a different life for ourselves and we have a different ability to create a different life for the planet.

Speaker 2:

But part of the issue is people number one have to step out of ego and recognize that they're letting ego run the show, which ego just helps us move through time and space. It knows how to put the foot on the brake in the car. It knows how to put our foot on the gas. Spirit doesn't know how to do that. Our foot on the gas, spirit doesn't know how to do that. And so our ego is really here to help us live here, but we gave it so much power that it's running amok.

Speaker 2:

So the challenge is how many people are going to wake up to the fact that they are spirit and they are a seed of source, and that money, more things, more power doesn't create joy and happiness, but connecting with nature as um, as alive, and we're part of it and we are nature, and that we do have the ability to create the life we want. We do have the ability to create the life we want. We do have the ability to step in the dimension of reality that we want to live in. How many people are willing to do that? I don't know how many people are willing to do that. I do know that there's thousands of spiritual practitioners who are willing to do it and who are waking up to different possibilities and opportunities that we have. So how I describe this is we could either see ourselves on a ship that's sinking which it is, but we have the choice to get off the ship and swim, and I don't know how many people are just willing to go down with the ship.

Speaker 1:

I'm curious do you have, or have your guides helped you see a vision for what it might look like if the masses decided to start swimming?

Speaker 2:

Well, I think the masses. What the masses are doing is they're all creating their different dimensions, they're all creating different bubbles of dimensions. And so, just to give an example, my husband was telling me and I was just floored by this, my husband was telling me and I was just floored by this there's a movement to go back into old, traditional life, and so there's a whole population called traditional wives, and you know, it's living the old way of staying home, raising your children, taking care of your family. And so my husband read an article about how the traditional wives have taken aliases and they've started groups where they're talking to each other about how they gave up everything, they gave up their money, they gave up their freedom. They're stuck and just trying to get help from each other.

Speaker 2:

I was not aware of this dimension of reality. I mean, it's so far from my consciousness. When my husband told me this, I was like, wow, that's a whole bubble, that's an entire bubble that I don't live in and I don't know about. So that's just an example I'm trying to bring up. How many different bubbles do we have in this collective where we actually have no idea what's going on? And so, instead of trying to get into everybody's bubble and either try to heal it or try to bring in help where help hasn't been asked for.

Speaker 2:

What about learning about the bubble that you want to live in? You know we have groups of people who didn't just give up but are living in their small communities. They're all helping each other build, they're all helping each other garden, they're all helping each other feed themselves in this challenging time, and so we have examples where people have stepped into a beautiful reality, where they are one with nature and they're living in community, helping each other. So all these different situations are in our world at the same time and we pandemic. Everybody is how do we get back into community again? I want to be back in a healthy community again where we're journeying together, where we're helping each other, where we're supporting each other, and so that's a whole different dimension of reality than a lot of the collectivists living in. But we're doing it. We're doing it so it's possible. If one group can do it, it's possible for everyone.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, that need for community, I think, is so inherent to who we are as human beings, and one of the things that I see a lot happening right now not just in the spiritual community but, as we said, in the masses is that kind of emptiness that we feel that lack of connection. We end up trying to fill it with the news or politics or being aware of as many of those bubbles as we can be at one time. Are you seeing that and what kind of impact are you seeing that have on us as humans and souls?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I think it's making us sick on every single level. And so, you know, people who are interested in shamanism are empaths. They're empaths and we have a tremendous amount of compassion. And on the negative side of that, we want to save everybody. You know, we just want to save everybody going into countries who are dealing with all kinds of challenges right now, but we don't know the ancestors of the land there, we don't know the karma of what those people are going through, we don't know the destiny.

Speaker 2:

And so what I see is happening right now is people go to places on the planet where people are starving, are going to places on the planet where and I mean consciousness-wise not actually traveling there where people are in prison, where people are getting deported, where people are getting hurt on some particular level. And so what's happening is we're actually splitting ourselves into too many different dimensions, so we're not inhabiting our body fully. We split our soul into oh, I've got to help here, I've got to help here. Oh, I've got to see what's happening here. Oh, I have to journey on this.

Speaker 2:

And all of a sudden we're not home inside of ourselves.

Speaker 2:

And if we're not home inside of ourselves, we start to get depressed, we start to get physically ill, we start to feel confused, we don't know what's going on, and so we start to look to other sources for information, like the news A lot of people are going to AI right now to get comfort and to get understanding.

Speaker 2:

So I feel that it's really inappropriate for us to be split into all these places and it's time for all of us to call ourselves back home, and everybody. If you know how to do that, if you know how to journey and work with helping spirits, you can journey on that. Or you can simply do a meditation where you put on some really nice spiritual music and you go inside yourself and see all the places they sent themselves to in the past and are starting to call themselves back home again. Their faces are changing, so their families can see the change. The light in their eyes are changing and they're getting that reflection back from their families. What are you doing? You look different, you look brighter, you look happier. It just involves coming back home again.

Speaker 1:

It's that modern take on soul retrieval in a way that need to continuously call ourselves back, especially in today's day and age where we are so split. And I'm curious because we have a lot of students and community members and I think this is, like you said, kind of inherent to being an empath where they feel like it's selfish or they feel guilty for calling themselves back and not being in every dimension. Can you speak to that?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, absolutely. You know, I can get so lost in suffering and I have a brain disorder, which is why we're on audio and many, many stresses created it. But some of those stresses were how I split so much into. I used to be on Twitter when I was promoting one of my older books, so we're going back years and there was a woman who was always posting about animal cruelty and she said if you're not willing to watch these videos, you're being selfish. And so I watched all these videos of animals being raised and tortured and all this stuff going on in the planet and I got really really sick, really really sick and the split that we keep doing and how we keep.

Speaker 2:

There's a difference between having compassion and there's a difference between taking on all that pain, and that's something people in the spiritual community needs to understand the difference. So I work with as a helping spirit, I work with the Egyptian goddess Isis, and when I was writing my book Medicine for the Earth back in the 1990s, she said to me of the Earth. Back in the 1990s she said to me you know this community and you everything that you're part of. We really can't work with you. You're so empathetic, you're taking on so much stuff. How are we supposed to work through you to bring healing to the planet when you're so filled with suffering that doesn't belong to you? So she was saying, because a shaman is a hollow bone. A shaman brings through the power of the helping spirits, but if you're so filled with suffering, how do you actually bring through that power of the helping spirits? And so fast forward to today, where so many of us I've taught so many people how to work with the power of light? And how do we let light shine through us when we're filled with so much suffering?

Speaker 2:

And so the selfish part of closing our eyes to what is happening, to take care of a child who isn't being given food that's not my karma, that's not my destiny. So when I get lost in that place, I'm losing my own destiny. I'm losing why I came here, what my soul came here for. So I think it's the egoic part of ourselves that gets into selfishness. The spiritual part of ourselves is more neutral Understanding. Like for myself, it's not about I'm in pain or what's happening to me. It's more about understanding. I'm a divine being who's learning a particular lesson right now and stay focused on that and grow and evolve so that I can come to a different place in my life. When we start getting involved because we feel guilty, we lose our own path in life. We're not following our destiny anymore. We put ourselves in somebody else's destiny. I don't know if that makes sense.

Speaker 1:

It does make sense and I have to say thank you for that answer. It was really beautifully said and illuminated some things. For myself as well. It's interesting because I often tell my students that a lot of times humility is kind of the antidote for those anxieties about what if it's selfish or what if I'm being a terrible person for letting this thing go. But having that humility to, like you were saying, be able to say that story, that dimension, that bubble isn't mine, it's not my karma, I'm just here to do my path to walk my destiny is so powerful. But I also think that egoic part of ourselves can also then get caught up on the other side of things in feeling like there's this one specific thing that we are meant to do in this lifetime, this one thing that we're meant to be, and then we get caught up in that. Can you speak to that side?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I think you know life is a winding path and you know, if you take a hike in nature, you spend a lot of time in nature everything is always changing. You know nature's always changing. Nature's always in perfect order, but it's always changing. Even when it's in chaos, it's in perfect order. There's an order to the chaos that's happening. And so I think to feel that we're in one role for all of our life is a little limiting, because who wants to have one role for their whole, entire life? So, besides practicing shamanism for over 40 years or for my whole life, I also studied the tarot. And when I studied the tarot and I worked with my teacher, she has a particular way of working with numerology so that you can see what year you're in, but you can also see your whole life path, and so when I was in school, I had to do a paper on my life path and I saw that my destiny as a teacher ends at a particular time and I said to her is that when I'm going to die? And she said well, think about Grandma Moses. And she started painting when she was in her 90s, or something like that.

Speaker 2:

And so we take on a particular role and a particular passion. But we also change as we go through life. We age, we move into different cycles of life where it's actually no longer healthy for us to keep living out that same destiny because we're in a different cycle of life. And so you might feel like, oh, I want to be out there and I want to help as many people as possible, but then you're naturally going to enter into a cycle that draws you more within to be more self-reflective, more within, to be more self-reflective, to spend more time in nature, to not be around so many humans and not help so much.

Speaker 2:

So if you look at the earth, we're always changing cycles. We're always changing cycles. So we can't expect that we're just going to have this one destiny. We can't expect that we're just going to have this one destiny. I know people who try to do it and I don't know how well it works out for them, but I love the excitement of life changing so much as I've shared. I've just had so many professions in this lifetime and so many adventures in this lifetime. I can't imagine giving that up for just one role in life. There's just too much to explore in the adventure.

Speaker 1:

I wish that more people and I suppose that's the intention behind your work and my work and this conversation is I wish that more people could feel that excitement of the buffet of opportunities that we have in this lifetime. I like to call it the rapture of being alive, that experience of just living. And do you see that people are able to embody that more easily once they start calling those pieces of themselves back home?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, yeah, that's one of the things I'm seeing. I'm seeing this incredible excitement in people who are calling themselves back home right now and exploring all the different things that they haven't done in their lives, that they're really looking forward to finally doing, and knowing that that's going to change over time too. That, um um, time is a living being. Time is a helping spirit. Time is not linear, it's a malleable, it's always changing too, and it's actually, in shamanism, it's a sentient being that changes. That is a helping spirit for us, and past and present future are all happening at the same time, and so when you actually step into that reality, you realize that there isn't that much to fear. There actually isn't that much to fear. It's like open yourself to a new adventure and realize how much spiritual help and how much spiritual support that you have. You have it from the earth. You have it from source. You have it from the earth. You have it from source. You have it from the sun. You have it from the moon, the galaxies, the nebula, the universe, time, space. There's so many helping beings out there, and so if we could start feeling a deeper connection, so, again, maybe putting on some music or doing a shamanic journey where you're not dissociating, you're not sending a part of yourself, you're doing the opposite. It's where you experience inside of yourself a deep connection to the heartbeat of the earth. And you know the earth, which is billions of years old, is feeding you and holding you in love and you allow your body to connect to that. And you allow your body to connect to the connection to the sun, which gives us all the life we need to thrive, and we allow ourselves to connect to the power of the wind the wind is actually the very first living being that ever appeared on earth and to connect to that power and to feel it as an ally for you and to the primal sea where you were born from, to connect to that power and then to allow yourself, when you feel ready, to stay connected to your helping spirits and to source and then allow that connection to move to the moon and the stars and the galaxies and the shamanic ancestors and the helping ancestors of the land. So if you start to feel a really strong connection, like you would have with your favorite plant or your favorite person, where you don't give a part of yourself away but you feel this energetic connection between the two of you. If you allow yourself to start to fill up with the power of those connections, with the power of those connections, think of the force and the strength non-egoic, not power over power with the force of nature, which is power, with that power just in all of your veins, pumping through your blood, all of a sudden you can step more into the adventure because you know you're being held.

Speaker 2:

I think that people won't step into the adventure because they don't feel held enough and they don't feel supported enough. And I understand that. We've all been through that and we all cycle through that. When we're going through challenging times, I have no support, nobody through your veins, because those forces are in you and they're outside of you. And so how can you fail? I mean, how can you fail? What's the worst thing that's going to happen to you?

Speaker 2:

Isis used to. She came to me once. My spirits don't do this as much as they used to, but they used to come to me and just give me surprising messages. And Isis came to me once and she said to me you know what your problem is? And I said no, what? And she said you just don't see life as an adventure. So I started giving her my worst case scenarios.

Speaker 2:

And I grew up in Brooklyn, new York, and again, you know I'm more of an elder at this point and back when I was growing up, a fear in New York that people would plant inside of you was that you were going to become a bag lady.

Speaker 2:

So it's just a common thing that a lot of women who grew up in New York that seed got planted within us and so I said to Isis, what if I end up as a bag lady in New York? And she looked at me and she looked away and she looked back at me again and she said what an incredible adventure that would be, what an incredible adventure that would be. And so spirits come here for the adventure, they come here for the adventure, we take bodies for the adventure, and so the fear ends up in prison and keeps us in prison and so we never feel freedom. And so the fear stops us from having full joy, full bliss, full adventure, full getting ourselves in and out of trouble and going. Oh my God, what an adventure that was. But I had the power and the strength and I had the support of the universe to experience and then get out of and walk out of it when it was time was time.

Speaker 1:

I love that story. I love how upfront our guides can be sometimes. It's funny, though, because that idea of the fear that we get stuck in, I think, also then starts breeding the fear of it, but also the judgment itself of, like you were saying, being a bad lady and why that would be such a terrible thing and what that would mean about you. But when we go into the spirit realm, those judgments don't really exist the way that they do to our egos and that idea of taking life as an adventure. It's not that it's negating the suffering, because I can hear some of the listeners saying, well, but that's not going to change the fact that maybe I'll experience grief or loss or a difficult situation, but it can change the way that you look at them. I know in your books you refer to a lot of suffering as a rite of passage, that kind of initiation of the next phase. Can you speak on that a little bit?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, for me, the power of walking through the darkness. And Lynn and I wrote Walking Through Darkness, I think even before the pandemic, and so we didn't even know that people were really going to need this, and I recorded Polishing the Path of the Soul, again before a lot of issues were actually coming up. There's such power in walking through the darkness. The darkness is such a place of growth. It's not a scary place at all. It's not a scary place at all. And in shamanism, in shamanic cultures, people were put through initiations really early in life to actually get them in touch with their spiritual strength, and so your ego cannot help you walk through a fire, but your spirit can. So the purpose of an initiation and walking through the darkness is to actually go through a dismemberment where your ego is put aside and where you have the test that leads you to the opportunity of tapping in to the spiritual part of you that can do anything. That can do anything, but first you have to lose everything. First you have to lose everything. So darkness can be seen as a terrible place of suffering because you're grieving, you lost everything. You know you lost everything that you love, but it was all to bring you to a place of letting go of what is inauthentic in you and bringing you back to the truth of who you are. And so in shamanic cultures, you have to understand that they couldn't have weak links in their community because they wouldn't be able to survive. So people were put through these really harsh initiations because they had to be strong enough to be able to bring their gifts to the community, because everybody has a piece of the puzzle. And are you strong enough to bring your piece of the puzzle to the community so that you can survive together, survive together. And so initiations where we lose everything, sure they bring up terrible fear in us, but that's life. We have to go through them. It's how we grow. If you think about fall, the season of fall, everything that is old and is no longer growing and is no longer vital anymore, goes back to the earth to be composted, and so that's what the darkness is Walking through.

Speaker 2:

The darkness is letting go of everything that's inauthentic in your life, that is not real and that is drawing away your strength from being able to be a healthy person in your own life and a healthy person in your own community to share the brilliant pieces of the puzzle that you came in with the brilliant pieces of the puzzle that you came in with.

Speaker 2:

So I know that people are afraid of loss, grief and pain, but I know that everybody who's listening, who has been through loss, grief and pain, knows the ecstasy that comes from that too. There's an ecstasy that comes from the deepest pain and all of a sudden you're open up to the biggest downloads of your own soul and of your spirits and of the planet. But it takes that kind of breakdown to get there, and so it's actually nothing to fear, because even while you're in it there's an ecstasy to it. You have to experience that to really understand it and how much opening it brings. It blasts your heart open, much opening it brings. It blasts your heart open. So so much more is available to come into your life, more opportunities. But we're all the whole entire planet is in a gigantic initiation right now.

Speaker 1:

Absolutely, and so for people who are feeling that, who are really feeling like they're in the midst of the darkness, you shared that beautiful ceremony for calling yourself home, but what are some things that people could do to bring that into their daily life and really help propel them through the darkness?

Speaker 2:

tool and so I start talking about this immediately and walking in darkness and then in the audio book is our intuition, because what happens in darkness is the very first thing we do is we look to others to take us out of the darkness, whether it's. You need the supplement, you need this form of therapy, you need to practice shamanism, whatever it is. You need to practice meditation, you need to breathe. Who did that come from? You know you're turning to somebody else to tell you how to heal your life, and your intuition is actually your strongest gift that you were born with. It's a gift that we were all born with, and so I find that the biggest downfall that I've seen as people walk through the darkness is they give away their power to every authority, I mean whoever it is. They don't even care. They just want somebody to tell you what to do, and so the biggest tool that you have is when you follow your intuition. All of a sudden, there's a light inside of you that emerges, and you can follow that light instead of following other people's voices. So you follow your own deep knowing. And then another thing that I think is so important and people already have gotten this in our time. Now, if you have any spiritual practice, is spending more time in nature chaos. So to emerge yourself completely in nature and to start connecting with the power of trees and the power of the plants and the power of the wind, and to actually lie on the earth Again, the earth is billions of years old To lie on the earth and connect your heart to the heartbeat of a being that's billions of years old, and to stand out and raise your arms to the sun and to let the sun help to clear you and to fill you with that energy of life. So you can see that even in the darkest times, there is help everywhere, and the biggest help that people are actually experiencing right now is their intuition. People who realize oh my God, I've been listening to everybody but myself and people who are lying on the earth and talking to the sun and the clouds and the winds and the waters of the world and the plants and the trees. We're all feeling more balanced and more secure and more centered, and so I really encourage people as much as possible to spend as much time in nature, even if you live in the city and I work a lot with omens, because the universe is always showing their support to you as you sit or walk in nature, by bringing your favorite nature being in front of your eyes a butterfly, a dragonfly. Just when you needed that sign, just when you needed it, the universe provided, provided it for you.

Speaker 2:

Uh, just to give a funny example of this, of how nature really works with us um, we have I lived out in the country and we have we feed birds and um, I made I made an agreement with the spirits to always make sure to have water for the animals, and so water attracts animals. So we have a lot of nature beings that we live with, and so we have this bird, chickadee, and my husband really, really bonded with Chickadee I mean really bonded with Chickadee and some shamans in the Andes gave me a ceremony to do, where I had to walk a really far distance and put something into the earth, and my husband and I brought a shovel and we were on to do our ceremony and there was Chickadee walking with us this really long time and then walking with us back. Then Chickadee disappeared and we got the flu and my husband was really going down with Chickadee not being around. So I went outside and I started screaming Chickadee, chickadee, chickadee what's new to you? And Chickadee came out. And then Chickadee to shorten the story because it could go on Chickadee recently disappeared to have babies, but then they all disappeared and we thought they were dead, actually put its beak on our door and knocked on it and when Woods opened the door, chickadee was there, just with its wings, letting us know it was still there.

Speaker 2:

So the point of this story is, as we allow ourselves to connect more deeply with nature, we realize that we're not alone. We have an amazing amount of support. Even though, as a collective, all of life is going through this unbelievable initiation of death, loss, grief, suffering, pain, illness, we still have all these supportive beings. We have our communities, we have nature, we have the elements, we have the greater forces that basically run this earth and they're all helping spirits for us to connect with and they're all helping spirits for us to connect with, and so that gives us the strength to keep going, even in the darkest of times, when we see the love and the help and the care that we're being given by our human and nature community. It gives us the strength to keep walking.

Speaker 2:

And what I keep sharing, because this was the very second journey I had ever, in 1980, was my power animal saying to me whatever happens, never, ever sit down in the dark, ever sit down in the dark. That was the very second shamanic journey I had and I learned, it's true, it doesn't matter how small the step is. You saw the sun and you had a second of joy. Come in through that pain and that fear. That second of joy, come in through that pain and that fear, that second of joy is a step forward. So what would help you in life to take that tiny step forward, instead of sitting down in the darkness, because sitting down isn't going to lead you anywhere. As you keep walking through the darkness, the light always finds you.

Speaker 1:

Beautiful, beautiful. I have one final question on that. As we're walking forward and we're finding the light, one of the questions that I hear a lot is well, how do I know if it's my ego, or how do I know if it's my intuition or nature speaking through me? What's your piece of advice for people asking that question?

Speaker 2:

Well, for me, everything comes back down to intuition, and so when I wrote my first book, I actually put in an exercise to get in touch, to know the difference between ego and intuition, and I've been using it every day since I learned it back in the very early 80s. And so you sit down and you close your eyes. This whole exercise you can do later takes less than five minutes. You sit down and you think about something you really, really, really love, really love it, and you notice what you're feeling in your body by saying the truth and then get up and do something really distracting Go wash the dishes, go brush your teeth, do something very different and then come back and say I hate that same thing that you said you loved, and watch the reaction in your body when you told yourself a lie, the reaction in your body when you told yourself a lie.

Speaker 2:

And so for me, this is just me. I get a green light when it's true and I get a red light when it's a lie. But those were the two symbols that appeared for me when I did that exercise. So when I start to question, is this my ego? So when I start to question, is this my ego, where's this coming from? Did I hear it from somebody? Is this really true? I go inside and I look for green or red, and that's how I know, and so it's a great exercise to test whether it's coming from your ego or whether it's coming from the deepest part of your soul.

Speaker 1:

Beautiful. Thank you for sharing that with us. I can see how that would be such a powerful and easy way to tune in in the day to day.

Speaker 2:

It's so easy. I've been doing it forever, and the only time it's not worked is when I haven't listened. And the only time it's not worked is when I haven't listened.

Speaker 1:

I often do the same thing, but mine is is this a yes or is it a no? But that internal feeling that you have in your body is so powerful. Our nervous system really is that bridge between our intuition and the physical.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, yeah, beautiful.

Speaker 1:

Well, Sandra, I know we're coming close to time. I often like to do a quick fire round of short little questions at the end. Are you willing to join me in that?

Speaker 2:

Absolutely, yeah, beautiful.

Speaker 1:

Okay, so what is your favorite shamanic tool or ally right now? What are you feeling most connected with?

Speaker 2:

Oh, my drum, Always my drum.

Speaker 1:

Have you had the same drum all your years of teaching?

Speaker 2:

I haven't, and I had to change my drums due to climate, and so I actually do use a synthetic drum now, but to me it's absolutely alive, it's in my will. I will die with this drum with me.

Speaker 1:

Beautiful. What's one memory from your shamanic practice that stayed with you over the years?

Speaker 2:

Oh just, I have this incredible power animal and he lives on an amazing mountain and having the opportunity to drink tea with him and converse with him and to laugh with him, it's going to absolutely be my greatest memory in life. He walked every step of my path with me.

Speaker 1:

That's amazing. What piece of advice. If you could go back to yourself when you were just starting your shamanic journey, what would you tell yourself?

Speaker 2:

I would actually tell myself to listen to my younger self, because I'm actually reading my old books and I was so much wiser when I was younger than I am now. So don't always believe that age brings you to the place of wisdom. Your younger self holds a lot of knowledge. Go back and talk to your younger self and find out some of the wisdom that you forgot. That's what I'm doing now.

Speaker 1:

I love that so much as someone who is very much a spiritual being in a very young body right now. I appreciate that piece of advice. Is there a natural element that you feel most deeply connected to at this point in your journey?

Speaker 2:

Well, they really shift. For me. All the time I was really terrified of wind because how wind pushed me around as a kid and because of the turbulence that I used to travel 300 days a year teaching, so I've been in a lot of turbulence, so the wind actually became my greatest ally. Right now, I have to say I have a love affair, a true love affair, and I have for years with earth, air, water, fire. I absolutely love them and I absolutely believe they love me, and so we're just in this glorious relationship, all the time together, where I always feel their strength, their love, their power and I'm never afraid of them, because they're life itself and they are me.

Speaker 1:

Beautiful. Final question. That's maybe a little longer, but I've been very curious to ask you this About a year ago. I'm in your Facebook group, the Shaman's Cave. Highly recommend anyone listening to join you this About a year ago. I'm in your Facebook group, the Shaman's Cave. Highly recommend anyone listening to join that community. But you commented on a Facebook post that you don't always see things when you journey, and this is something that my students have a really hard time with. They often feel like if they don't see things in their journey, that they're not doing it right. So I would love to hear from you on that, because I think they'll listen Right.

Speaker 2:

So I would love to hear from you on that, because I think they'll listen. Yeah, this is the biggest question that I've been talking to people about for 44 years of teaching. I am not a visual person. I talk in visual terms. I say I saw this in my journey. I saw that I have actually never seen anything in a journey visually.

Speaker 2:

We are such a TV movie culture that we believe the visuals are our strongest sense. And I don't want to offend anybody, especially at the end of this, but actually our visuals are at least evolved sense, and so I'm clairaudient and I'm clairsentient. I hear the wisdom of my helping spirits. I don't see, I hear, and I feel it in my body. I feel it in my body, I feel it in my bones. I believe the most evolved sense that we have is clairsentience, and I believe that's where human beings are going to be evolving to.

Speaker 2:

And so why, when you graduated college, are you trying to go back to kindergarten? Stop it. Stop it. If you're a clear audience, if you're hearing and if you're a class sentient, you've already graduated college. You're already in a different consciousness and incredibly involved. If you're stuck on the visuals, it means you just want to watch more TV, and more TV has not helped anybody grow, so I've never been visual. As I said, I talk in visual terms but think I've written 13 books. I've helped tens of thousands of people heal from trauma, abuse and all kinds of illnesses and I've never seen anything, and so the visuals are extremely overrated. They're for people who want to be entertained.

Speaker 1:

I love that and that clairsentience, that feeling it in your bones really goes back to that intuition exercise that you gave us of knowing what it feels like in your body.

Speaker 2:

Exactly, yeah, beautiful.

Speaker 1:

Well, Sandra, thank you so much for your time today. Is there anything else that you wanted to share that you feel is important for our audience to know?

Speaker 2:

else that you wanted to share that you feel is important for our audience to know. Well, I just really want people to take the pressure off of themselves. I think people are putting too much pressure on themselves right now, I feel, where every single one of us is doing the best we can right now. Every single one of us is doing the best we can right now and, from a spiritual perspective, I see the greatest wound in the spiritual community is that we lack self-love and we lack self-worth. It's the biggest wound in the spiritual community and it's what's keeping us from being able to tap into our destiny, tap into our gifts, tap into the passions, everything that we want to create and the power that we came in to change our life and to be a real force of change in the world. You can't do it when you're judging yourself. You can't, and so to really meditate or journey on the love that went into your creation and how much trust that your spirit and your soul has, because it holds all the knowledge. So really try and heal any wounds that you have around loving yourself and feeling worthy.

Speaker 2:

I feel that if we can't heal this wound as a spiritual community, we're not going to be able to walk forward to the dimensions of life that are calling to us right now, and I feel that we all have the opportunity to do this, and I really want to encourage you to do whatever work you can to heal that particular wound, so that you're moving from a place of knowing your power and knowing how much love that you were created with and that you are a seed of source, and that power and that love of source is in you.

Speaker 2:

It was a seed, and now it's grown into who you are now. So look at your beauty instead of what you're lacking. Honor your beauty, honor who you are, and that's all life is asking you to do right now. That's all life is asking you to do right now. That's all life is asking of you right now. So I just want to say thank you for doing the best that you can, and I send blessings to everyone. And thank you, isabel. This was really a joy to be with you today. Thank you for the brilliant work that you're doing out there. It's so needed.

Speaker 1:

Thank you, sandra. It has been a true honor and joy to speak with you, and thank you for the brilliant work that you're doing out there. It's so needed. Thank you, sandra. It has been a true honor and joy to speak with you, and thank you for the work that you're doing. Thanks, blessings, everyone Blessings, and to everyone listening, until next time, may you awaken to the whispers of wisdom rising from within. Thanks for tuning in to today's show. The Wisdom Rising podcast is sponsored by Moon Rising Shamanic Institute. If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to subscribe to the show on your favorite podcasting app and be the first to know when we release a new episode. You can find us on Instagram, facebook, youtube and TikTok at Moon Rising Institute, or visit our website, moonrisinginstitutecom to learn more about our mission and find future opportunities to connect with our community of shamanic mystics. Once again, thank you for sharing space with us today, and until next time, may you awaken to the whispers of wisdom rising from within.