Ever struggled with setting aside your ego to help others? In our latest episode of the Everyday Shaman, we sit down with Daniel Thrasher, a man whose journey from the ravages of PTSD and a tough divorce to becoming a beacon of healing and spiritual guidance is truly inspiring. Daniel shares how his experiences in Iraq and his quest for inner peace through shamanism and psychic healing paved the way for him to assist others on their paths. You'll hear firsthand about the importance of quieting the mind and focusing on personal growth as a means to facilitate healing for others effectively.
Discover the profound symbolism that shapes personal spiritual journeys. Through Daniel's stories, we explore how reading, martial arts, and shamanic practices contribute to self-awareness and ego management. Intriguing discussions about the coyote's symbolism and the personalized nature of divine guidance reveal how these elements interact uniquely with each individual. We also touch on the delicate balance of spiritual experiences versus mental health conditions, emphasizing the need for responsible guidance and understanding.
This episode also delves into the importance of energy compatibility when selecting healers and the impact of intention on healing outcomes. Daniel's anecdotes about his encounters with various healers offer valuable lessons in discernment and alignment in spiritual practices. We wrap up with heartfelt reflections on the rewarding nature of supporting veterans in distress and the interconnectedness experienced through community networks. Don't miss out on Daniel’s invaluable insights—connect with him on Instagram at DanielsHandywork for more wisdom on healing and personal growth.
Learn more, schedule a Q&A by phone or video, or book a shamanic session at www.everydayshaman.net
Visit my Facebook page - https://m.facebook.com/jeffreybrunktheeverydayshaman?mibextid=LQQJ4d
Consider subscribing to the podcast! https://www.buzzsprout.com/2361167/supporters/new
Ever struggled with setting aside your ego to help others? In our latest episode of the Everyday Shaman, we sit down with Daniel Thrasher, a man whose journey from the ravages of PTSD and a tough divorce to becoming a beacon of healing and spiritual guidance is truly inspiring. Daniel shares how his experiences in Iraq and his quest for inner peace through shamanism and psychic healing paved the way for him to assist others on their paths. You'll hear firsthand about the importance of quieting the mind and focusing on personal growth as a means to facilitate healing for others effectively.
Discover the profound symbolism that shapes personal spiritual journeys. Through Daniel's stories, we explore how reading, martial arts, and shamanic practices contribute to self-awareness and ego management. Intriguing discussions about the coyote's symbolism and the personalized nature of divine guidance reveal how these elements interact uniquely with each individual. We also touch on the delicate balance of spiritual experiences versus mental health conditions, emphasizing the need for responsible guidance and understanding.
This episode also delves into the importance of energy compatibility when selecting healers and the impact of intention on healing outcomes. Daniel's anecdotes about his encounters with various healers offer valuable lessons in discernment and alignment in spiritual practices. We wrap up with heartfelt reflections on the rewarding nature of supporting veterans in distress and the interconnectedness experienced through community networks. Don't miss out on Daniel’s invaluable insights—connect with him on Instagram at DanielsHandywork for more wisdom on healing and personal growth.
Learn more, schedule a Q&A by phone or video, or book a shamanic session at www.everydayshaman.net
Visit my Facebook page - https://m.facebook.com/jeffreybrunktheeverydayshaman?mibextid=LQQJ4d
Consider subscribing to the podcast! https://www.buzzsprout.com/2361167/supporters/new
Hello everyone and welcome to another edition of the Everyday Shaman. I'm your host, jeffrey Brunk. Today I have with me guest Daniel Thrasher. Daniel was born and raised in upstate New York in a non-denominational church and ended up walking away from the faith after watching two churches implode. He learned some hard lessons about people and getting burned. During that time, dan had a reawakening of sorts after he returned from invading Iraq. He ended up stumbling upon shamanism, received some training from great people in both shamanism and psychic healing, and Daniel studied psychology and any modalities he could get his hands on Along the way. He ended up getting divorced and remarried to an amazing woman. Dan has survived many life-altering events emotionally, physically and spiritually and I'm extremely grateful to have him with me here today. So, daniel, welcome, great to have you here. Thanks for having me, jeff. It's been a couple of years or more I guess, since we first spoke and it sounds like you've had quite a bit go on in the last few years. So what's been going on with you, your investigations into shamanism and other modalities?
Speaker 2:been going on with you at your investigations into shamanism and other modalities and oh, yeah, yeah, we had. Uh, when I reached out to you, I was in, uh, I was in a pretty rough place. I just wrapped up a messy divorce that worked out, honestly, better than it probably should have. I was by myself, hadn't really got my feet back underneath me, didn't really know where to go from there and didn't entirely understand my life falling apart the way it did, and I just I needed to touch base with somebody and I found you and it's. It's been a journey since then to just refocus and kind of rebuild my life and kind of reset in a sense, you know.
Speaker 1:Yeah. What were the contributing factors in in getting to investigation of shamanism and different are they healing modalities?
Speaker 2:Most of it's healing modalities. I really enjoy doing healing work with people, whether it's talking through stuff with them that they just haven't been able to wrap their mind around, or if it's actually doing like healing journeys or psychic journeys, introducing them to a plant that might help them with some kind of medical issue that they're having. That's probably my biggest enjoyment out of this type of work is just seeing people get better, whether it's, you know, life-wise or physically.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I can relate. I've done a lot of journeys and I don't know afterwards what goes on. Some people will tell me, sometimes three, four years later, and I'll find out oh, this happened, and this happened, yeah. But, it's nice to know. I believe that's part of setting ego aside. So it sounds like you've been able. It's not easy for a lot of people to do so. To be able to do that, it sounds like you have.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's a. Uh, ego is a is a brutal, fickle master. Um, you, you really like cause I'll catch myself and the, the ego part, and that's not just like when we're. When we're talking about ego, I feel like we're not just talking about like the, being cocky or like proud of yourself. There's a, there's an aspect of self that creates it definitely has its negative sides you know the, the, the cockiness and stuff like that but there's also the side that is protective. Your ego responds to things and I think that that's very strongly linked to in my experience to PTSD is an egoic response to a traumatic experience. But you can't really do healing work when your ego's on the front of that. So you have to, you have to learn to kind of strip that to the side and set it to the side and do your work, and it's a lovely thing to look at oneself sometimes.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I um, I don't know about you, but when I do work for others, it's fairly easy for me to set my ego aside. But when I do, or if I attempt to do, work for myself, it's more difficult. Or it has been up until the last year or so even, I don't know why, but whether it's feeling like, oh, I don't deserve this, or I don't need it, maybe a male thing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and we tend to overthink a lot of stuff too, especially in Western society. Our minds get so far ahead of us that we're judging ourself on stuff that doesn't even matter and or other people haven't even noticed, you know, and we think it's this terrible thing and it's uh, it definitely keeps you on your toes.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you made a good point about the ego. I bring that up a lot as far as setting the ego aside without thinking how others might perceive ego, because you can think of it as like dead ego, super ego, yeah, that type way. Oh, you know, however people look at it, but it's really just setting aside the sense of all right, what's going on with me? I just am going to put that away until I work for this other person. It's really for the betterment of the person and be able to focus with intention on them. How did you get to a point where you were able to set that aside and work for other people.
Speaker 2:That's a really good question to try and think through the process of it.
Speaker 1:Well, let me ask did you make practices of quieting the mind first, whether you realized it was happening or not?
Speaker 2:Yeah, that was probably the first part of it when I learned a journey, just being able to quiet down your mind. But I think after I'd gotten back from Iraq and I was dealing with the issues I was dealing with PTSD and a lot of anger issues, a lot of feeling stagnant and resentment, things like that. One of the things that helped me kind of start digging out of it was, you know, studying the psychology so I could understand the way I was thinking a little better. And then after that I read Eckhart Tolle's book A New Earth. That is a lot to chew on.
Speaker 2:I can read 300 pages a week easy and it took me three weeks to get through 80 pages of his book. There's just so much in there in that book specifically is the ego and setting the ego aside and realizing that the things that are happening to us, that shape us, are simply events that we're passing through. They're not things we have to hold on to and that kind of let me start separating my mind from the things around me and I'm definitely not perfect at it, but it gave me kind of a handhold to start kind of getting my mind under control when I needed to be under control on things and realizing what it was.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and that's great. It sounds like in a lot of ways that you quieted your mind, or learn to quiet your mind, sort of without even recognizing it, through reading. Yeah, it was.
Speaker 2:I had. I had a background in some martial arts so I'd learned a little bit of meditation growing up. It was mostly combat oriented, but you still. It's a very similar place to go that, that empty space, the non-self. My first martial arts instructor, oddly enough, was very what's the right word? He was very. He drove the fact that when you walk into a classroom to learn like a martial art, you need to treat it like you've never learned anything and that separates the self from your learning and I kind of. That's kind of always stuck with me in a sense, I guess.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's setting the ego aside when you do that, going into anything, like you may know everything about it or think you do. Yeah, but setting all of that aside just to say or to think there's something else that I might learn or need to know.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's definitely not something I'm perfect at, but the more I go through life now, especially as I'm getting older, the more I'm able to be like but there might be a different perspective completely. That's going to show me something I would have never thought of.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and doing this type thing, learning never ceases. There's always something new. It's like you're given as much as you need or can handle during those times. It's like taking steps you know, and then, once you've gotten to that point, you're given a period of time where you work with that. There's a break, yeah, and then you feel it when it's time to learn something new.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah. Yeah, it's very interesting too that the more I talk to people that do this stuff, like you and I have have had some great discussions the representations you see when you're journeying are are different than the ones I see when I'm journeying. I think a lot of shamanism that I like about it is it's tailored specifically to the person who's doing the journey. So these are the symbols that you are going to be able to interpret easier than like. If I saw some of the symbolism you see, I wouldn't know what to do with it. Like I wouldn't understand it the way you do. Whereas some of the symbolism I get is more mine's, more animal based, yours is more shadow, light and shadow based. From what I've heard from you and I think that's the it has to do with the best way for us to understand what the information is that's trying to be given to us.
Speaker 1:Yeah, there are a lot of animals within my journeys, but they do have different representations or different meanings. There's a flip side to every animal symbolism. If you see a snake, you see a spider. Whatever the animal may be. They have different meanings and every culture has meanings, but there's a core element within all of those. That's true for every culture. But they have a good and a bad side to them. Right, Right and people tend to gravitate towards this is the good, Right and then really shy away, say if it's something that symbolizes potential death.
Speaker 2:Yeah, one great example of that is the coyote specifically is a great, crafty, adaptable, incredible animal. It really is an incredible animal. So there is this whole positive side of the coyote. But if you talk to Navajo Indians, they don't like the coyote at all because their historic past has to do with skinwalkers and the kind of anti-shamans, the people who use this stuff against people they have a different name from in South America. I can't remember it right off the top of my head but, um, so if they see someone with a coyote pelt in their house it used to be they would just outright kill them. So the coyote has a very negative representation inside that culture.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I've encountered coyote and within journeys several times, the first being a journey for my wife. She wanted to know her spirit animal and it was a coyote Nice and it was good. But recently I've encountered it several times but they've had very, very negative connotations in some and very protective connotations within others. But they're tricksters.
Speaker 2:But they're also super family oriented, pack oriented. They have long pack memory. They're a really cool animal. The more I learn about them.
Speaker 1:When I've encountered them as tricksters, it's been really within the shadow and the dark journeys. Right, the shadow was actually within a journey, trying to get me in my ethereal self to capitulate to it.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Using the coyote it's funny how, for instance, doing a journey, and I call them the divine essences. Yeah, for me, raphael was one of the first and he approached me in a way that made me comfortable.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:So that I was able to get the messages that I was given. And I'm sure you know they don't give yes and no answers. I give yes and no answers. That would be too easy. Yeah, that'd be too easy. You know everything. Yeah, what's the point? I'm done. You know Other people that have encountered, whether it be Jibreel or whoever it may be. They approach them or they encounter them and they have a different countenance With Jibreel. He's very stern with communication and discernment. There have been. I know at least one other person that's come to me and he's humorous and I'm like really he's not humorous with me.
Speaker 1:I mean, there's been a few times he said little things that are sort of borderline yeah like he doesn't know how to do it yeah but it's neat how that happens and because we're all different, but we're all made of the same thing. The divine, or the light, or God, or whatever you choose to call it, knows exactly what we need and how we're to be able to receive it in order to understand it and use it for ourselves and for other people.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think you're touching on one of the subjects that I enjoy a lot about shamanism, but I'm also very careful to try to impart to people is everyone has a different way of labeling things. You call things divine essences, I usually call them entities, and that's one of the things that I love about shamanism is we're not stuck on definitions, like you don't use this term and this term only for something and it limits linguistic control of your spiritual path. In a way, You're not worried about having a ritualistic labeling, but you're also not stuck with interfering with someone else's labeling, like if someone says well, god, and the next person says the universe, you know that's completely okay. I try to be respectful of those different uses of language and a lot of people, especially inside organized religion, there's specific words they're supposed to use for specific things and I think it in a way clouds their experience. Yeah, and it starts the ritual before you've even done anything, you know.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's a big reason why I don't use the word angel. I use divine essence because it's more an element of light. But you tend to picture, if you say angel, the winged beings with the chubby cheeks or the. You know the paintings that you, you know, and although I have seen them with wings of some sort at some different times, they're nothing like the quote, unquote angels that if you've grown up in religion, that you would picture, or you see them on paintings or TV or whatever. So I don't use that. And the same goes for titles Reiki, master. I don't like it's an ego thing and I shy away from even calling myself a shaman. I don't like that because I know it's a very revered title and I don't want to. I don't know it's an ego thing too.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's almost presumptuous to label yourself as a shaman Like that's how it feels to me it's a, and traditionally it's been something that other people called like oh, this guy's a healer, this guy's a shaman. Other people would call you that. Um, I ran into one lady. I was at a, at an event, just a bunch of different modalities of healing and stuff like that and and her, her table was set up and she had some shamanic stuff there. So I stopped and talked to her, because I'm always looking for anyone I can train with or learn something else from, and she was more bent on how long she had trained under this guy.
Speaker 2:And then, you know, that's the reason why I can put up my shingle and the comment just sat like off with me and I was like I don't think, that's like just because. And the comment just sat like off with me and I was like I don't think. That's like just cause you trained with someone for 12 years doesn't make you a shaman. I know people in the army that trained for 12 years and they're they are. I wouldn't trust them with a spork, you know. So so I don't think and I and that's not to like I never I didn't have a really long time to get to talk with her or see her practice. So I'm not judging her as far as her ability to help people, but just the phrasing of that comments was off for me and it it let me know immediately that I probably wouldn't train well with her. Not that I couldn't learn something from her, but that definitely wasn't the person that was going to teach me, and I knew it as soon as she said that I was like okay you're not my teacher.
Speaker 2:That's not saying she can't help somebody. It's not saying she's extremely good at what she does. It was just the phrasing of it is kind of what you were talking about. That almost feels weird to say this is who I am, you know.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, I use an example when I finished Reiki training, four years took that amount of time because I wanted to take time in between each level. But as soon as I finished, or not long after I finished, I went to a Reiki master for a session for myself. I expected to have that person be in the same mindset as I was. I ended up being sick for a week afterwards. I literally was sick because it was. She arrived late, her energy was all over the place. Just frenetic stood behind me and she banged a gong behind like a little. It wasn't a gong, but it was.
Speaker 1:I didn't see it coming, I didn't know she was going to do that, scared the crap out of me, got on the table and then she started. You know, when I do hands-on it's very light. A lot of times I don't even do you know there's, there's hardly any touching at all. But she is like a deep tissue massage and my shoulders it hurt. Yeah, I mean it really hurt, and but she, her energy, I don't know. I didn't know it at the time that it was the energy transference the way it was, because my intention had always been, when I was learning, that you're supposed to be in a good head place, right, and she wasn't. And so many people are not focused or they're doing it for the wrong reasons.
Speaker 2:Right, when I'm doing like smudging and stuff like that, I barely ever touch people. I rarely have to. You can feel their energy, sometimes from feet away. Oh yeah, it's. Yeah, it's interesting You'd say that I've seen some people that just have a very different method.
Speaker 1:And like modalities. There's no one way, Right, right.
Speaker 2:To do something. It is what works for me. I'm built different than this other person, so this is what works for me. And in these modalities I find the same thing. Like I'll see one thing from somebody and be like, oh, I like the way that works, I think I can use that. And then I'll see other stuff that I'm like no, that's not going to fit with with how I work, but I appreciate learning it and everything's a process, but it, those those little pieces, those little differences, I think is what makes us amazing. But it also makes it so that you have to be a little careful about who you're having to work with you, because certain, certain energy sets just don't do well together. Not that they're not that there's a negative aspect to that, but they just they don't fit quite right and you want to find that person that fits with you?
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's so true. You know, I was turned away by a Reiki master one time saying, oh, I don't have enough, I don't have room, I'm not taking on new clients. And I thought no, I didn't think it, I actually said it how can you turn people away who are coming to you when they need?
Speaker 2:help.
Speaker 1:I've had one person no, two people, aside from the one that made me sick that I've ever allowed to do work for me, but it's because I learned something from the one when I got sick, right, right, but it's more of a knowing and a feeling of that energy. Even if it's just over the phone Now, it's the same. Like you mentioned, taking years to train to become a shaman Well, there are cultures that do that, you know, especially if, if it runs within a family. Yeah, it's almost like an apprenticeship, yeah, but it's not the only way that that happens. There's also. Everyone has it within them to do a certain amount of these things. But it's for myself and I believe, probably for you it's going through a set of traumas and getting to a place of almost being broken that allows you to open up and accept when you finally accept that you're broken.
Speaker 1:That's when, boom, there's this, this awareness that comes around, that just floods through you and things change like overnight it seems.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's yeah, that's a really great way of putting it too. So I had started studying shamanism and then I went through this. I got a phone call from someone from high school that I hadn't talked to in 20 years. She's like I think you're supposed to do the psychic healing class with me and we'll go into it in another conversation but all the pieces fell into place for me to end up in this class and it was almost immediately after that class that my life exploded and I think in that process I was left with nowhere to hide myself from people, lost friends, but it feels like you're getting stripped down to your bones and I took away the whole. If you don't live your life where you have to keep secrets, then you don't have to keep any secrets. If you are doing things that you feel like you should hide from somebody, don't do the things you feel like you should hide from somebody. It's a super simple answer, you know.
Speaker 1:It is. It's a simple answer, but it's not a simple answer in our society, especially for guys.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but it literally broke my life until I was living in a trailer with I had a bed, I had my tools for work and I had a table and chairs that I got from an apartment at the apartment complex that I was working at and that's where I had to start rebuilding from. It's a. It's a brutal experience and not everyone goes through that. I don't think. I think people who learn how to do this kind of stuff and it works for them but they're not going to be moving on to like doing a bunch of work healing other people I don't know if they entirely go through that whole, but there's a certain amount of that learning process.
Speaker 2:I think with people who are supposed to be doing a lot of work with other people or taking on the responsibility of actually being under the apron of a shamanic practitioner or a shaman, there's a difference between the two. If you're going to start labeling yourself as a shaman or being labeled as a shaman, I think that the stripping of your life is a lot more intense. You had a name for it.
Speaker 1:I think For me it was hitting rock bottom. It's like losing everything to gain everything.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. I was literally sitting at a computer looking at a loaded 45 going. I looked at that 45 and I understood immediately why people feel like that's the only answer. Yeah, I was to where I was like oh, I know how people get here, Like I actually saw it for the first time personally.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it wasn't. It wasn't a 45 or a gun for me, but it was waking up on suicide watch in the hospital a couple of times. Yeah, yeah, um. I wasn't aware of what all was going on, right, right, but it was so overwhelming that, at the same time, life kept going on and it's like I'm freaking cat Nine lives kept coming back. It's like, all right, there's a purpose for this.
Speaker 2:Well, and there were some days where it was just getting up and going to work and I don't know how I got to work, like I don't know how I made myself do that and then the next day you do it again and you're a little bit better, or you learned a little bit more, or, you know, you find yourself a month later being able to start putting a couple pieces back together or examine yourself a little more or, you know, do a journey.
Speaker 2:It took me a while to journey. I was so, my life was so chaotic. I felt at the time that it was difficult to quiet myself enough to journey. But I constantly had those conversations in the back of my head where you're having conversations with your spirit guides or with your, you know, with God, or however you want to define it. You're talking to somebody in the back of your head and you get that, you're getting intuitive answers, but you're not able to, like, sit down and really quiet yourself down enough to journey while you're working through that process or for me it was. It was difficult, yeah.
Speaker 1:To admit. That is huge, because if you tell someone now you're talking to someone in your head, it's like we have a pill for that. Yeah, no. So people don't want to admit that and most people won't admit that, and especially guys won't admit that, but it happens, lord knows. I go around our property and I smudge the property and I give blessing, but I actually talk out loud to guides and to the land, right, I guess that would make me crazy in a lot of people's eyes.
Speaker 1:I had one young man that came to me and he drove two hours just to sit and talk and he said he hears these voices talking to him, right. And I asked him. I said what are they telling you? Are they telling you things that are bad, harmful things? And he said no, they're very encouraging and I'm on the right path. I said keep listening to them. I don't care if anyone tells you that you know you're crazy or you need help or you need medication, as long as you're not thinking of doing things or the voices aren't telling you bad things or getting you into that paranoid space.
Speaker 2:That's something different. Having those conversations with your spirit guide or God, you know, which is essentially what you do when you pray. There's a difference between that and that paranoid like something's talking to me. It's uncomfortable. I'm starting to see uncomfortable things in my life. You get people who start going off on the on the we. We define it as schizophrenic, like paranoid schizophrenic, and and that's a very different interaction and I think in my experience, I think those are two very different situations, but they're also. They're both from one foot in the spirit realm at all times.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and even with schizophrenics. Now I know I'm not going broad with every person that's diagnosed as were labeled. There are some people that are just labeled. With me, I was labeled bipolar by a physician's assistant without any testing when all of this was going on with me. But there are people that are so sensitive and so open that these elements of darkness and divine essences are talking at the same time. Not everyone can be lumped into. Okay, he's schizophrenic, he's bipolar. I think society labels us that way. There's a lot of reasons for that.
Speaker 2:I shared with you a little bit about my brother and his struggle with that, and I've talked to my mom extensively about it. She's shamanically trained as well. She's a Reiki master and several other modalities of healing work, and we've had some great conversations just discussing the possibility that schizophrenics, as a general statement, might have a channel that's open, that they don't know how to close, or was forced open and can't be closed, or they don't know to close it, so they have stuff talking to them all the time and it starts to wear on your brain.
Speaker 1:Sort of the same with people that are on the spectrum of autism Right.
Speaker 2:I think there's a fascination with people on the spectrum of autism. You get these genius level responses all the way down to not not being able to communicate at all and then like going into the study of that stuff, that's all. That's a whole rabbit hole to get get into it, but it is. It is fascinating the different reactions you get. Some people who who have those things start talking to them and they're very comfortable explaining it. They found a way to deal with it. They know what it. You know. They only kind of have a comfortable way of explaining what it is for them.
Speaker 2:So a podcast with a guy that he he's an artist and he draws some of the stuff that he sees, but he was very forward about. You know, hey, the whole time we've been doing this podcast, that wall over there has been all over the place and there's things talking through it and he goes. I've just learned I know that's not what other people are seeing that that's something from a different place, but he had an excellent way of explaining it all. It was very fascinating.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and being out in nature, I've had, I've had experiences where I will see even and people think this is really crazy because they would kill it in a heartbeat but it was a black wood, a spider, and it was under a bucket and I took it and I didn't kill it. Yeah, it was almost like it was talking to me, right? I named it Scarlet Nice.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:And took a stick and played with it.
Speaker 1:I didn't let it crawl on me or anything, because I didn't want to take that chance, but then I set it free. There was a message that it had, and at that time there were so many spiders that would just seemingly come out of nowhere. I'm sitting on the front porch one day and there was one little furry white spider. It was the cutest little thing. It was on my leg, yeah, and I'd never seen one around here like that. And I'm out in the middle of the freaking woods and there's spiders everywhere, but I'd not seen one like this. And later that day I was somewhere else on the property and there was another one. I don't know if it was the same one or not, but it was the same type spider.
Speaker 1:It's the only two times five years we've lived in this home that I have seen that spider, but during this time, they were showing up everywhere and they have so much meaning and at the same time, I was getting, during journeys, images that it wasn't of spiders all the time, but it was webs and the connectedness of things. That was the message I was being given webs and the connectedness of things yeah, that was the message I was being given was there are people that are part of this web that are meant to actually help regain and maintain balance in this world between the light and the dark and the shadow, and the shadow being what we embody within us. That's where the ego is. That's the part of the ego is the shadow.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there was a. You're saying the interconnect, the interconnected part of us. There's a, there's a journey you can do to see your true self. It's it's an intense journey. The first time you do it, especially looking at what is my ideal true self, show me that person. And part of that journey for me was after I had seen myself. It kind of like zoomed out of earth and I could see all these lights like little dots all over the place and as I got closer and closer, all those dots had lines connecting all these other lines to all these other people. I didn't realize it was people until I got closer and closer and closer and then I saw those lights are inside people's chests and all those lines are connecting to all the people that are around them.
Speaker 1:That's wild, because I have had that exact same experience. It's almost like a satellite view of America, with all the lights on at night yeah. Yeah, I've had that exact same experience within a journey, seeing that and also seeing it in the sky as spider webs. But yeah, that's wild that you've had that same being drawn away so far.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, it's not like you're in space it's, it's in another realm, yeah. Yeah, there's. It wasn't a feeling of space, it was a feeling of just that like an observational point.
Speaker 1:With me, it's whenever I'm drawn up into those realms, those really higher realms, and given images like that it's usually a very deep, meaningful message that you're being given. It's not that that happens all the time. More times than not, I'm doing work on this realm or the lower realms. When it's taken up into the higher realms like that, it's special, it's very meaningful.
Speaker 2:I'm trying to think of a good way to phrase it. I think there's a difference. When you're journeying to heal someone specifically, or for yourself specifically, with intentions on very set points, you're not looking at larger events Like that's not the intention of that journey. But on that specific journey I wanted to see true self, high self, and that's why it yanked me out that far, and it was kind of like someone snapping their fingers at you, like hey, you need to pay attention to this, because this isn't like your microcosm of your neighborhood or your friend group. This is something far larger than that and you need to understand the scope of this. I think, is how it felt to me anyway.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you're spot on with that. I've been drawn so far out. It's not just this universe, it's seeing multiple, multiple universes and the interconnectedness of them. At one time I was shown how and where. You know the small little spot we're in.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And the vastness of everything that is is off kilter and it's veering in. The frequencies that are within everything, within space, within the universe, within everything are off and just it's like when you go in the ocean and swim, you go in in one spot and then you look around and you realize, oh man, I'm 200 yards from.
Speaker 2:I'm not even near there anymore.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah yeah, that's bizarre, bizarre. First time I've ever heard someone describe a journey image for image that I've had.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's confirmation, and it is, it is fascinating when someone is like oh, or, or you, someone else is talking and they describe something that you've seen a hundred percent and you're just like I know that place, like it's, it's amazing and it and it really helps lay to rest. One of the difficulties when you're learning shamanism at first is am I making this up in my head, am I seeing this animal for real or is it? Am I making this up? I have had a lot of people ask me those questions, but we did.
Speaker 2:When I was doing the psychic training, there was seven or eight of us in that class and one of the last things we did was a journey together and we we were at each asked after the journey was done what they saw on that journey. And I saw a flower that opened up and each one of the points of the pedals was one of the people from the class, and someone else described it as seeing a constellation of stars, and each person was one of those stars, but it was very, very similar, just described in the way that they can see it. Another person was really good at seeing colors, so everything was all in colors. I don't see a ton of colors.
Speaker 1:You see, I do and I'll see. It's like with my guides who change. I go into a journey with a single intention and I do call upon certain guides for protection and discernment and things like that, but I never know what might show up or who might show up. But I'd see a lot of colors and sometimes they are not there in form, sometimes it's telepathic.
Speaker 1:I'll get messages sort of like the, you know hearing the voices in the head but in a lot of times it's colors, and this colors could be within, like you say, flowers, even the colors of an animal's eyes. Yeah, one recently was a black snake with a blue underbelly. I'm like, okay, I know who's there with me with the, because of the blue and being able to interpret that, but, um, I do get a lot of colors.
Speaker 2:Yeah, see, that's incredible to me. I see, I see shades from white to dark, and then probably the only color that I have that that is recurring is gold.
Speaker 2:That's a good one I was doing some work on a person and while I was doing the smudging like this gold cape was down their back. It was absolutely amazing. There's another one where I did some work and there were some entities in this person's lungs and when I put energy in them cause I try not to destroy stuff, I don't think that's our place really, but for me personally anyway when I put energy into them, they changed from a very dark color to gold. It was just incredible. So gold is one color I see, but there's people who hear music. There's people. It's amazing. But yeah, colors are not the way I get most of my information.
Speaker 1:I can't remember hearing music. I do get smells. Oh nice, nice. At times you talk about destroying things. You can't destroy energy, right, right. And this is interesting and I have to let you know. I don't know if you were aware of this, but when I journeyed for you, that was one of the very first times, if not the very first time, that I encountered elements of darkness. Right, they weren't the lowest leveling elements of darkness, they were.
Speaker 2:You were a little alarmed when you got in touch with me.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that was one of the first times ever since then more and more and more and it's gotten deeper. It's almost. It's strange. It's the elements of darkness realized the imbalance, but the elements of shadow did not.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's an interesting look. I'll have to file that one away for later.
Speaker 1:I want to do a podcast at some point on ghosts, because that's a big thing. There's so many doggone ghost shows on now, but those are elements of shadow, or there are a lot of those. I see orbs around here all the time, even in the daytime.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there's somewhere in the in-between space. Yeah.
Speaker 1:But they're a mixture of light and dark and you can't destroy energy, but you can transmute the darkness part or set free the light part. Right, there's still an element of consciousness in these things.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, there's still an element of consciousness in these things? Yeah, yeah. But when I approach, like when I'm smudging outdoors, and I know that there has been everywhere you go, there's been some sort of event or some sort of trauma, Because everybody goes through something. It may be minor, it may be major, but I don't approach anything with a sense of anger or like you see on those shows get out of here you're banished, which is stupid.
Speaker 1:You can't banish energy, but I do it with a sense of acceptance and gratefulness for the things that were contributed by, whether it be an animal or a person that is passed on, but I do it with a firmness.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there's also an authority element, like for you to walk in and tell an entity that's been living there for a hundred years that you can't be here anymore. You need to leave. If you don't have the authority to do that, it's not gonna go, it's gonna torment, it's gonna mess with you even more. Um, that's why getting permission from people to do healing work is so important. That's why, thank you, yeah, yeah, so, like and then like we just bought a house, we're actually closing on it on the second.
Speaker 2:So I'm accepting stewardship of that property. I don't consider it ownership. I'm accepting stewardship of that property and once I sign those papers, I'm now the steward of that property, that I will go in and clear that property, because I'm now the one who is in charge of protecting, improving, repairing, if needed, whatever needs to be done there. And there's going to be things that I will allow to be around that property and there's going to be things that I'm not going to allow. And if it's one of those things because I am, I have been assigned stewardship of that property I have the authority to say you don't belong here anymore. If it's something that's relatively neutral, you need to find somewhere else to live.
Speaker 2:However those journeys go, when you run into them, every one of them is a little bit different. I've never run into two entities that were the same.
Speaker 1:No.
Speaker 2:There's no magic formula or any weird stuff like that.
Speaker 1:What I found on this realm.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:The closest thing I can compare them to are the imp in uh lord of the rings, but it's much smaller.
Speaker 2:They're like the dumbest of the shadow elements, but as they get darker they're very intelligent oh yeah, the shadow elements will try to exploit vulnerabilities yeah, they're also very good at doing what they're meant to do, because that's all they've done like they have way longer experience lines than we do. They're seeing our world from a different perspective than we are, and if their drive is to create fear, they know all kinds of channels to create fear, even lulling you into a sense of security, so that they can create another fearful moment later. It's fascinating.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and they can take the most inane fear that you have, or not even a fear. Oh yeah, all these different things. So fear is sort of at the root of almost every shadow, illness or emotional problem, physical issue, whether it's a rational fear or not. Fear is a good thing, a fight or flight yeah, it's a motivator, but it's also a motivator on the other sort of like the animals it's. There's a flip side to it.
Speaker 2:You know it's a positive thing, a negative thing. Yeah, there's a difference between fear and caution. Fear owns you. Caution is exercising the ability to prepare for things to possibly go wrong, and there's there's a there's a world of difference between those two words.
Speaker 1:And there's a world of difference between those two words. Yeah, but even with caution, I think people that are like super preppers, that's not caution, that's fear.
Speaker 2:I don't know anyone who does any prepping work. I used to work. Oh, I do, I work for a guy.
Speaker 1:I do too. I worked for a guy and his wife. They were ex-military, yeah, and were in Iraq and their shop it was a outdoor preparedness and funny, they also sold doTERRA oils, which I love, but that's what they did, that's what they sold, and I worked there for quite a while. Super nice people, but ultra preppers, yeah, and there's an element of fear that goes along with that, the ultra prepping. There is an element of fear that goes along with that, the ultra prepping.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so there's a massive body of psychological research currently being done and having been found in the process of examining PTSD and soldiers who've been through combat and a very large number of the combat arms guys, the actual infantry, the people who do the shooting and the blowing things up. There's almost a paranoia in us and someone was asking me about that because a lot of them do turn into preppers or they're very they're outspokenly anti-government or they're subtly hiding things in their homes, things like that. And someone asked me about that and I said well, listen, we personally and very viscerally experienced places that the government went out of control or disappeared and everything was lost. We have seen the worst of what humanity can do to each other and because of those experiences we've learned don't trust your government because they can turn on you.
Speaker 2:We've learned if you don't have extra food at your house and the grocery store doesn't have food, what are you going to do? We've learned those experiences because we've literally walked through them and it kind of shapes. Some of those people definitely take it too far, but anything can easily be taken too far and I always tell people like you'll never prepare for everything, but if you learn how to make your own food. You have the stuff you need to hunt with. You have the stuff to maintain your property, whatever that is, and you have the stuff to communicate, then you're going to be so much better off than everybody else and you'll be able to help other people.
Speaker 2:You cannot prepare for everything. That's impossible.
Speaker 1:And I won't lie.
Speaker 2:Build a community and a network.
Speaker 1:I'm not going to lie. When we moved here, and even before this, I mean I've got to go back and or a bug out back, I don't, I don't think I'll need it here, have some food. And before we had our generator, we went through several days without power in the winter, with storm. But we were ready, had water lights, everything we needed. It was actually kind of fun because, you know, sitting around by candle lighter.
Speaker 2:I have a weird obsession with buying candles. I do too, I do too.
Speaker 1:We don't need any more candles. Like yeah, we do, cause I use them all the time. I light them, you know, when I journey I have even a process of the color candles that I use and where they sit and how I light them in order. So I go through a lot and then we light one every night on our hearth in our living room, nice, and let's say we're opening the door now because we've seen so many orbs with all night vision and they're not bugs, they're definitely orbs.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there's something else yeah.
Speaker 1:And watch them go to the candlelight. It's so cool to see and we'll close that door, you know when we go to bed, and but some will sometimes have that candle burning for hours and hours.
Speaker 2:So we go through a lot. We go through a lot, yeah, yeah, it's uh, I think I think I told you a little bit the last time we talked after Iraq. I, I didn't like people, I didn't want to be around people. The world was not a happy place for me. And now, um the process of getting back to where I love people's stories and I love there's a fascination and an amazement to the world we live in. I define that again Like it's not just your nine to five job and going to work and paying your bills. There's a whole nother aspect of just take five minutes and really look at what's around you and just take that in and it changes your entire world.
Speaker 1:Yeah, man. And there's so much more. Even with our eyes, there's so much we miss, but there's so much around us that we don't see or refuse to accept that we know it's there to the world around you.
Speaker 2:That's shamanism, that's spirituality, that's a. That's a. That's a spiritual connection. It doesn't have to be learning how to journey. It doesn't have to be something you feel like you don't, can't do or you're not trained to do. It's a simple connection to the world around you, like go outside with no shoes on and just stand in the grass. That feeling for five minutes is unbelievable.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you literally start to buzz, vibrate.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and it's, but it's that simple. I said uh, one of my friends was, he's an atheist and uh, and he goes well.
Speaker 1:I don't believe that to me. If you're an atheist, if you, if you believe in nothing, you have to believe in something, right yeah?
Speaker 2:Well, I said. Well, he said you know I'm an atheist. I said is that? Is that something that you've concluded? I said cause I can take you out back and show you God in five minutes. He's like what I was, like I can show you God in five minutes and he's like that's not good and like we had a great conversation and he knew I wasn't trying to bash on him or anything, but like there's, there's this Was there's this.
Speaker 1:Was he expecting? A guy with a white beard sitting on the patio?
Speaker 2:drinking a bud. I think that's what it was. He was picturing the stylized description of the Christian God, and that's not necessarily what you're going to get. No, how about this? Those little jumping spiders that you see all over the place, like that little white spider? Just take a second, get really close to it and look at how intricate it is. Don't try to describe it, don't try to figure it out, just look at it and all of a sudden you're in another place. You know, it's that simple.
Speaker 1:For a spider's web. Some look like someone you know. The spider got up drunk and just threw it up. But some are so precise and just gorgeous and when the sun hits them they shine like a prism all these different colors.
Speaker 1:The prism is the way I'll try to explain the light and how it splinters into these different essences or entities, as you call them. Looking at spiderwebs is so I don't know. There's something about it that just speaks to me and it's. I think it would speak to humanity If people would just look at them and see how, how much patience the spider has for that. You know, it takes the time to create a web, not knowing whether or not it's even going to catch anything to eat. The patience that it takes. It waits and waits, but it creates this beautiful pattern. Yeah, it's sort of a euphemism for all the interconnectedness and the human nature within us as well.
Speaker 1:I think maybe that's why I see so many. I've seen so many spider webs and spiders yeah.
Speaker 2:Well then, when you start taking time. My daughter was terrified of insects for a little while when she was younger and we ended up she had a collection of over 200 insects. Um, I learned how to pin moths because of her. We would go through, we would go on hikes and just take pictures of insects, and the more you start to notice that, the more you take that time. They're everywhere, everywhere. Yeah, you have to take the time to notice them and it's, it's fascinating and so many people get wrapped up on on. It's not. It's not the end of the journey. That is the point, is the journey. That's the point. So don't get overwhelmed, don't feel like you have to do all these little performance things in the process, like it's the little steps and those are the right steps for you.
Speaker 2:Don't feel yourself by other people, Just that calmness. It lets you kind of reflect.
Speaker 1:It's very well said and it's easier said than done. Yeah, oh yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:Especially. I'd say all that. I'm going to mess it up today, so it'll be fun.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Especially in our society, where there's expectations and there's processes for everything. You know how you live your life from birth to death. Right, and you know I think of it as you come into this world alone, you go out of this world alone, and what you do in between is up to you. I mean, there's things that you need to be taught, but not how to live your life and what paths you take. This society now is even more difficult to live your own life, to be your own authentic self, because you're bombarded constantly with the static of either news or social media and people setting expectations on how you should look, how you should dress, how you should act and they don't realize that none of it actually matters in the long run.
Speaker 1:No, no, so I have to ask?
Speaker 1:first say how great it is to have you as another man on here to admit these things and a man that has gone through the rigors of being in the military and in Iraq and the war and the things you must have seen and had to do. I won't even ask about that. But were there things I know that to have PTSD? There were things that happened that caused trauma but to get you to where you are, I'm sure that played that time in the military played a huge role in breaking you down to where you're able to accept these things about yourself now those events that kind of fixed the importance of helping people, of creating a better path in my mind.
Speaker 2:Like it fixed it in my mind so that I can see things a little differently. I mean literally getting to see the worst things people can do to each other. It shapes you and you can either get stuck in that place and start to resent people for it, or which I did for a long time or you can take those lessons and do whatever you can to help maybe prevent that from happening to one person or 10 people, you know, like kind of shape, help steer things away from those places. You know, that's kind of what I'm choosing to do with it now.
Speaker 1:Um, I resent realization and doing that Did they, did it? Come in steps for you?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, and it's at a lot of little steps, like I started with. Like, hey, I'm going to study psychology, just so I know what's going on with me and my friends. You know, like so many of my friends were not well a lot of alcoholics, some suicides, a lot of anger issues, divorces. So like just to start understanding that and then, you know, starting a journey to, to find some kind of a spiritual path again, cause I, like you said in my bio, I had walked away from the church, the Christian church, for a very long time due to those experiences. And then just I needed something to put my feet on, cause I was not doing well, I felt like I was floating, I had nothing underneath me to stand up on, and it's just you know. So I started reading. Reading is always something I've been really good at and really enjoyed.
Speaker 2:So, like the golden rule in the Christian Bible is the same thing as karma in the Hindi beliefs it's just worded differently for a different culture. The same as Buddhist belief. Whatever energy you put out, as the energy you get back. So when you start seeing these certain principles start to come in, and then like each step is like well, if this is said over and over again in all these religions, that might be a very important principle. So why don't we start with that and just start there? And it was like building these little tiny. Sometimes it felt like I wasn't going anywhere and then something would just hit me, or you know, like when I got the journey with you, and or, you know, someone would. I would be in a class and someone would just make a point and it would just bring all these pieces that I'd been rolling around in my brain would all of a sudden stop rolling around and they would be like all in line and I'd be like, oh, that's what that means, yeah.
Speaker 1:And you tend to get those realizations.
Speaker 2:Epiphanies yeah.
Speaker 1:Exactly when you need them. Yeah, yeah. Now have you worked with others that were in the military that you know, like you were mentioning, that had the problems with alcoholism or suicidal, you know inclinations or whatever it may be, because it sounds like you would be really really good person to come to, having been through that and recognizing that in others you know, not just in the military but especially you know just, you've seen it firsthand with those that you've served with Right, right, and a lot of it too.
Speaker 2:So I'll bump into. We're in a part of Virginia with one of the best VA hospitals in the country, so there's a lot of vets here and I'll run into them. You're in Virginia, yep, yep.
Speaker 1:I'm in between Charlottesville and Richmond. Yeah, just a few hours down the road.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I'll run into vets and one of the first questions I have for them, like yeah, they'll'll be the oh yeah, you know what branch were you in? Stuff like that. And I'll be like, how are you doing Some of them? It'll just short circuit them, like they'll. They'll kind of blanket me Like what do you mean? And I'm like, how are you doing? Like here's my number. If you need to make that two o'clock in the morning phone call, you call me. I don't care that we don't know, I don't care that it's that's two in the morning. I know how important that phone call is and you need someone to pick up at the other end.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Well, that leads me to a question about how you do, how you go about, because you and I are on the same page with this stuff.
Speaker 2:You know I've journeyed for people at 3am and 6am and you, you know I put on my website 24 hours a day. I don't turn anyone away, but if someone does call you, how do you? What's your process as far as going about helping someone where they're thinking, do they? Are they at the point where they're? Are they drunk, sitting there with a loaded gun and calling me at two in the morning Cause they have nothing else to talk, like they have no one else to talk to? That is a much more dire conversation than I'm having a really bad day. I'm struggling with some stuff. Are you drinking? No, I'm not drinking. You're sitting on my back porch, like okay. Then we have a different kind of conversation and you kind of have to gauge them all individually.
Speaker 1:Yeah, because every situation is different.
Speaker 2:And trying to get them in touch with a local group is super important. That's always the long-term helpful solution If they're close to me and they need something immediately. I'll literally get in my car and drive for two hours to get to somebody if I need to, that's. I mean. I've done it for friends of mine before and some of those guys you can tap into the training because we're taught mission orientation and we're taught following through on your word, like if you say you're going to be at a point at a certain time, you're at that point Like you don't want to let your brothers down. You know that kind of stuff.
Speaker 2:So sometimes you can tap into that and you know, have a conversation with them and then at the end of the conversation finish it off with we're having breakfast tomorrow morning, I expect you to be there, like you're telling me you're going to be there and you make it. You make it that honor code, you. You kind of tap into that honor code and use it. Sounds wrong to say that you use it to your advantage, but you use it to give them a reason to be at that appointment in the morning, you know. And then that's one step and that's if you can get them to do that, then. Then they realize that they're not completely lost, that there's steps they can take.
Speaker 1:But that's so important. That's so important because it's it's the same principle of when I work with anyone. It's having them either them call, contacting me directly, or going on my site. That's the first step that shows that they are open to receiving help.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So to do that with and it definitely helps, having been through the same kind of training and kind of understanding how that mind is trained to work.
Speaker 1:Yes, and your training. I'm sure you didn't realize it at the time, but your training with the military I'm sure you didn't think is what's going to create this sense of empathy. Yeah, in such a way that it's not only allowing you to be of service and to provide betterment to people that have also served, but to anyone. But they have to be willing to accept it. I mean willingly accept it, not prodded into accepting it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and there's those phone calls at two in the morning are one thing, and then you get guys that'll have, you know, a little more surfacy conversations about you know, yeah, I struggle with this and this and no, I know the PTSD thing, and then they kind of tuck it back in a corner.
Speaker 1:Do you ever find frustration with people that they're really searching, but then you don't hear from them and it's waiting on them? They have to be ready to make that step for themselves, but you know so badly that they need assistance. They need something that you can help them with. But you can't do it unless they're willing to receive it and say they want to receive it, or show that it's even more intense when you can like see a clear path out of where they are.
Speaker 2:Yeah, like you make two simple decisions and it'll completely change your life kind of thing, you know? Um, I used to get frustrated with that. I will occasionally catch myself still getting frustrated with it. Now it's more of a we're having the conversation. I'm planting a whole bunch of seeds, or giving them a whole bunch of pieces of information they can digest later and maybe, just like with me, someone else will come along and say one sentence and all of those pieces fold into place and they have their epiphany.
Speaker 2:So I don't I feel like some of that frustration. It's not wanting to say Gone away, yeah, I don't want to see you keep going through this.
Speaker 1:Why can't you just do this? Yeah, yeah, for me it's that frustrating. I get frustrated sometimes because I see where they're headed and, having been there, I don't want to see them get to that point.
Speaker 2:Yeah, start wanting to hand out helmets. You're going to need this in a few days. Yeah, and it's.
Speaker 1:The frustration for me is that I can't do anything about it. It's, it's in their time, it's when they're ready but you see it coming and you're going.
Speaker 2:Oh, come on please and that's one of those. That's one of those ego responses, not not because we want to be the ones who help them, but because we feel like they should know this. But that's our ego, that's's our human side.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, that's. That's our human nature, that's definitely.
Speaker 2:That's definitely one of the struggles is like you go through all this work, you journey for somebody and some of those journeys are they will wipe you out, like you will be exhausted when you're done. So I've had a couple of journeys go multiple hours and those are they're exhausting. At the end of the day You're wiped out, you, you're spaced out and then you you write everything up and you go over everything with them and have this long discussion with them and talk things through with them, and I always send a copy of the journey to them as well, so they have that record, which you do the same with your stuff too. And then um, and then you never hear from them again or you hear through someone else that they're still doing the same things, like nothing changed. That that's kind of frustrating.
Speaker 1:Or they do something to better themselves in the near term. They might go a few weeks or a few months and then, as life goes on, you know you have things thrown at you right and left, and to deal with those things but and part of our, our responsibility is as healers, doing this kind of work is to understand that it's okay for that energy not to be reciprocated.
Speaker 2:That doesn't reflect on us. So we have to be okay with the fact that sometimes we're going to expend energy that's not going to get returned. We have to and we, we accept most of us by and large, except that I do believe in in the reciprocation, but it doesn't have to be financial.
Speaker 2:No, no, no, not not financial, but just like the, and it can be as simple as as finding out a year later that they did listen to something you said. Yeah, it did change something for the better for them. I don't need them to pat me on the back or say thank you or anything like that, but to know that that energy was put out there and that information was given to them and it was used and it helped them, like that's to me more important than any other, like I don't. The finances are yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I feel kind of weird when people thank me, but there does need to be a reciprocation of an energy flow.
Speaker 2:It's not a one-way street, right, right, and I'd almost rather not be personally like have them call me back and be like, hey, man, this really helped me. I'd almost rather hear it through the grapevine, because then I feel like it's less likely to cause a prideful situation for me personally. Yes, yeah.
Speaker 1:At the same time. It's when you do get those, be it years later, yeah yeah, and you hear that someone has it still, reading the summary and picking out new things in it and how it's helped.
Speaker 2:It does feel good to know that you've helped, and it's less about me, it's more about the like that is awesome to hear that they're doing better, like that's, that's it, but it is a slippery slope to get prideful with what you do. Um, uh, and that's. That's one of the things that I learned early in my life, not even necessarily like even through the church. When I was still in the church, there was a lot of things that I did that I was trained to do and taught to do, and if you make it about you, it loses you. You might still be able to do it, but there's an element that gets lost and it's not you. Should be able to be completely removed from the situation, and that energy, that healing process, still works just fine. And you have to remind yourself that it's not you.
Speaker 1:You're just the mouthpiece of the, just the vessel and the messenger. Yeah, yeah, that's really true. Um, yeah, that's really true. That's why I don't put any interpretations of my own within journey summaries, because it's not for me. Nothing within there is for me. A lot of times I'll know what certain colors are, who's there with me, what the messages could be, but that's my interpretation, right, may not be the interpretation that they get.
Speaker 2:That's an interesting thing. So I share what I find shamanically when I journey.
Speaker 2:I'll share a hundred percent of it and if I get like a specific feeling or sentence or like and you and I both know one of those sentences will carry paragraphs of information, so I try and write as much of what was being told to me as I can come up with, like whatever steps of clarity come through, like this sentence actually meant these three other things too. I'll try to write those down as much as possible, but as information being conveyed, not as an interpretation. Yes, like this is, this is how the information came to me, this is what it seems like it says, this is, this is, or sometimes like, especially, I imagine, with colors. These are what these colors have meant to me in the past. They may mean the same thing to you. You know that that kind of stuff kind of is helpful because you, you do have the experience and you do have that well, interpretational experience that can help somebody who's never seen that kind of stuff before.
Speaker 1:Yeah, don't completely count it out, but at the same time, yeah, I will always let people know that after they have read the summary several times, not just once. You know when people contact me 20 minutes after they receive it and read it the first time, like no, read it, research everything in there, research the colors if there's animals. You know everything in there. You're led to research or let resonate with you and then I'll answer my journeys.
Speaker 2:You got most of my journeys in notebooks and occasionally I'll pull one of the old notebooks out and I'll go read through stuff and I'll be like I totally forgot about that, you know.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm the same way. I've got. I've got so many journals here, boxes of them, but now I I've. You know, I send all of my summaries via email, so I have hundreds of them in a folder. Yeah, yeah, we do things a lot. We see a lot of the same things and have a lot of the same experiences with journeying. Now, do you do, do you have a practice that you do, Do you? You know I don't advertise. I have my website. I've started advertising a little bit, but for the podcast, because that's what I've been led to do to reach a greater number of people. But do you have a anything set up where people can contact you or a place where you do, if you do hands-on work, or where you do?
Speaker 2:I think that's something that's coming in the future. It's always been something that's really been on my mind is how to help as many people as possible, but I've never had a place where I could really set that up. So now that we're buying this house, we're going to have nine acres of land. It's beautiful. Like I've been struggling the last couple of years with you know, when does my the that next chapter of my life start? Like, when do I get my forever home? I don't like renting because I'm just dumping money into someone else's pocket, um, and I feel like I can't move my life along as well, you know, and I feel like that's that's changing now. But I also got to the point where I was finally like, if we're buying our house now, the people that are supposed to be in my life need to drop into my life now, like and I've literally had that conversation out loud- and they will.
Speaker 2:And people have started showing up. And then I started you know, we were looking at this house and there's a bunch of stuff that has to do with it and one of the guys at the church we go to because my wife finds her spirituality, her spiritual connection, through church so I go and I support her with that. But one of the guys walks up to me and he's like hey, man, if you have anyone that needs stonework done at one of your jobs because I run a handyman service he's like you know, give me a call, I'll help him out. I'm like awesome, but I realized like there's two electricians in that church, there's a plumber, there's the stonemason, there's contractors, there's farmers, there's all these people that are in place. There's a couple of guys that go to church that have been shamanically trained Really yeah yeah. And one of them is fascinating. He's a prior service military and some of the training he did in the military was shamanically done was shamanically done Wow, one of his scouting courses.
Speaker 2:by the end of the course they blindfolded everyone in the course and they had to walk over a mile through the woods to get to a specific point. And they could do it and not like feeling out in front of their hands. They'd be walking at normal speed and there'd be a tree in front of them and they'd just walk around the tree like they knew it was there. It was awesome.
Speaker 1:It's using the connected really well. Yeah, it's using your other senses and and navigating through the unseen?
Speaker 2:yeah, but he is. He's a fascinating guy, just very calm about everything, and if he goes out and goes camping in the woods, he said, society hurts. When I come back, because, I can see the lights flickering like what you consider like solid, steady light. He goes, I'll see it flicker. Yeah, it's my head. And like it's too loud. He says this real deep connection to the world around him. It's amazing, but that's great.
Speaker 1:It sounds like you're surrounded by some really good people that you need to be around and should be around that, yeah, if, um, I mean, I have Daniel's handiiwork on instagram.
Speaker 2:That's the only social media I have right now, so if someone felt like they really needed to connect with me, they can always send me a message there okay, daniel's handiwork, yeah, okay and uh, yeah, it's just that, it's yeah, it's a h-a-n-d-i.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's just a, it's a work site, so I just post, you know, things that I do in my handyman work. But if someone needed to get ahold of me, they're more than welcome to do it there. I think I think before too long, probably in the next couple of years, I'll definitely have some stuff set up at my place. I want to start seeing if I can organize groups of people to get together and like have someone come in that's trained in doing something you know. Come in and you know sit all the sit around a fireplace and have a class. I want to get back into. I love smudging because it's part conversation, part healing work and I I just super enjoy that. So I might do a couple smudging things at some of the holistic events that are in the area.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Just kind of like reattach myself that way.
Speaker 1:Don't be surprised if you get thrown in it faster and more intensely than you might think.
Speaker 2:And I recognize that that's a distinct possibility, and my only caveat to that is like I need to make enough money to pay my bills.
Speaker 1:That's what's so cool about this. I was told when we were traveling to country you know, my wife had retired, she was FAA for 30 years and we were traveling and Northern Virginia was way too expensive. We didn't know where we wanted to be, so we went around, we had in a fifth wheel and lived in a couple of years and in that and we were kind of placed where we needed to be. Yeah, but I was told at one point by Gibraltar. I was like financially or otherwise, you'll be taken care of, is what he said, and there were times where that happened and it still does. Oh, yeah, things are needed. Don't know where they're going to come, boom, they appear or they come to us in unexpected ways, but it's in order to keep going forward with helping to regain and maintain that balance. And that balance comes from us and that connection we all share with the earth and everything else outside.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I really struggled for a long time with charging people for healing services too, like, if you're asking for a certain amount of money for the time that I put in, then I don't have to go work, a job which leaves me with more time to help more people. And also, I've discovered that people don't they don't act on what they learn from a journey or experience as much if they don't have skin in the game. So if it costs them something, whether it's like you know, I had these steaks in my freezer I'll bring them over and trade, for that Is that cool, absolutely. If they put something in it in an exchange, then they're more likely to use that information in their life.
Speaker 2:Yes, Do something for free. They're like oh, that was cool. And then they walk away and forget about it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, I had that same issue, and every time I've put prices on my site I've struggled with it, right, because I don't look what I do as a business, right. But I do believe that people should contribute in some way. So at the very least a testimonial on the site, right. But I've had people send everything from handmade jewelry and paintings and books to find, you know, to monetary donations, something that shows that they are invested, because it's not as much for me when they do that as it is for their continued healing and betterment as they go along.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:You know they have, like you said, to get in the game, no matter how small, because not everyone can afford to donate. I've had donations monetarily as low as $ small, because not everyone can afford to donate. I've had donations monetarily as low as $10, but that's all they could do, and that's fine with me.
Speaker 2:But I'd also accept, like I mean, we're getting ready to do a ton of work on this property. It was originally built in 1820. So there's a lot of work to do If they come out and help me shovel some dirt, or if they come and help me like clean stuff out of the barn, like whatever. It is like that the point is the the exchange of effort and energy, not the exchange of money as much.
Speaker 1:And that is money, is a two line that we do use. Yeah, we need it, unfortunately in this world, but the way, the way you're approaching it and the way I approach it and I know one other person, one other she is one of the only ones that I've allowed to do any work for me and she just moved from. She was in Mexico and now just moved back to States, but has the same mindset in that it's not about what you get, but you're. What you're talking about is exactly the way the shamanic healers or the medicine men, the fellow we were talking about earlier. He called me a witch doctor one time because he didn't know what his comment was.
Speaker 1:It's the way that they always operated was. It wasn't about getting money. It was about people would bring goats or food or whatever it could be, if there was. It was expected. They knew that they needed to and it's not. They felt it was an obligation. It was a something that they wanted to do. And that showed that they were really wanting to have that healing, of whatever nature it might be.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it adds a seriousness, and in some cases almost a sacredness, to that exchange between doing the work for you and the person receiving the work.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that is very well said. Now, that's great. I'm going to start using it. There's a sacredness to it, especially for people that are still kind of mired in church. That word will resonate with them.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:And they'll understand. It's sort of like passing the basket.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I do want to say that I don't want people to misunderstand my issues with religion as opposed to someone's spiritual relationship through church. Yeah, there is a big difference. There's a massive difference, and I do not disrespect anyone's mode to get to God. God's a pretty big dude. He can work with whatever you give him. I don't worry about that. That's something I had to let so many worries go so that they weren't eating my head, eating me up in my brain. At two o'clock in the morning I'm laying in bed sweating. So I'm not disrespectful to anyone's belief system that leads to that relationship with God or the universe or however they choose to divine it. Because I started in the same place. My journey led me to where I am now. Their journey might never lead them to the same place I go to, but I'm glad they're on the journey. You know there's never a disrespect meant with when I talk about the Christian church or religion as opposed to the relationship you know.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know, if you're just following the mandates and going through the motions without intention, like praying without intention, or what gets me is the Lord's prayer without intention, which I was always taught was the mother load of prayers but if you're just listening and you're there to be seen and all that and the first 20 minutes are financial statements and blah, blah, blah, then organized religion can be not exactly great, but the spirituality aspect of it Right, right it's, that's not. That's actually very positive, because you can glean something from basically anything.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:If you're open to listening, and not with your ears, but with your heart ears, but with your heart.
Speaker 2:I also discovered, too, that the people who are on a healthy spiritual path tend to have the attributes talked about in the new Testament love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, long. Those aren't what you hear in the world today are they?
Speaker 2:Right, but those are. Those are traits that you can't fake for very long, and there's really only one place that they come from outside of self. You know like you have to. You have to find those from somewhere to grow them in yourself. So if someone's exhibiting those traits, even when they stumble, fall, pick themselves back up, start over, do it again. They're on a path with some kind of relationship with with God or a higher power, however you want to define it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and if you don't, I have no right to judge how they're doing that path you know?
Speaker 1:Yeah, and if you don't stumble and fall and fail, are you really learning? No, you're not. You know you have to have those. They keep your ego in check.
Speaker 2:So humans? Yeah, humans have a terrible time learning things without some kind of conflict. We tend to, due to the fact that our brain likes to preserve energy, our body likes to preserve energy. If we're in a comfortable place, we won't make ourselves grow. It's very difficult to make yourself grow, but if there's difficulties that come up work difficulties, financial difficulties, health difficulties they force you to develop some kind of growth pattern and without those, humans become stagnant, depressed and they, they don't ever grow, they don't change.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I saw it firsthand, those issues are good, yeah, during COVID.
Speaker 1:It's wild because not a single. I had so many people that contacted me during COVID and out of all the people I work with and there were some days I was doing two, three journeys a day for five, six, seven days a week None of them, not a single one, had COVID. But it was way from that hectic lifestyle. You know, going to work, sitting in traffic, you know, whatever it may be, they started to hear these whispers, yeah Right, they started to hear these whispers, yeah yeah, and a lot of them being younger people.
Speaker 1:And that's that's when being taken out of that and hearing these things, that voice started speaking to them in a way that allowed them to start recognizing things about themselves.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they got that little itch going in the back of their head.
Speaker 2:And it's about our life is not right. And now that we're taking this second, where we're not running back and forth to work every day and that's not our drive, people started to notice that things were out of place. Yeah, within themselves, within themselves, within the world around them, the social structures we've created to run a society, like. People started noticing like is this weird? Like just crazy questions? Like I find it weird that blah, blah, blah and it's stuff that person never would have talked about before. And I'm like, yeah, I find it weird too.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, but it's, it's good, it's frightening, it could be frightening.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, I won't you know look at how many people are still walking around with masks, despite the report saying masks do nothing and they're angry and paranoid and they won't let people near them. They're riding around in their car by themselves with a mask on and gloves on and I'm like that level of fear is that's a problem? Like, yeah, I feel really bad for those people.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, it's frightening too when, like during that time, these people were gaining that awareness, that self-awareness, and that worldwide, you know the broad awareness around them. Yeah, that it was frightening to them because a lot of you know it's hard to accept a lot of things about yourself, yeah, and to accept who you might be and that you're in the wrong place or you're in the wrong job or whatever it may be.
Speaker 2:It's finding out you're 50, 60 years old and and most of your life up to then is was not worth the effort you put into it. That's a that's a terrifying thing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you spend most of your life at work. You better be, you better enjoy it, not just feel like all the things that you thought were important are not important.
Speaker 2:Yes, when you get the glimpse into that and you're just like, oh, like all those cars, you have all that, the house, you have all that, it doesn't like none of that stuff's important. Could I do what I do out of a, out of a studio apartment? Yep, I would love to be a steward of this property, though, and I'm really excited about getting it. I would rather do that. That's a more comfortable place for me, but can I do it anywhere? Yeah, yeah, that's important. I've lived out of a backpack, for it was almost a year in Iraq. I lived out of a backpack when I was in Kosovo for six months, like, what we think we need is not. We need very little compared to what we think we need.
Speaker 1:Yeah, everything we need and everything we need to know is within us. We just have to recognize that. Yeah, well, I'm going to wrap when we should wrap this one up and we'll go.
Speaker 2:We can keep going, but I'd love to have you back on. Oh, it'd be fun. It'd be fun yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, there's so much more I think we could touch on and this has been great. I think it's going to resonate with a lot of people.
Speaker 2:Good.
Speaker 1:Good, so you might want to look at a website.
Speaker 2:Yeah and I'll, and that's something that that maybe maybe this podcast was me needing to get pushed in that direction of like, hey, it's time to start actually getting this stuff done bud when it happens.
Speaker 1:It'll happen Boom so fast, but you're aware enough to know when it and when it happens, okay time to do this.
Speaker 2:And this is a great setting too, cause I love conversational setting. I love you and I've talked. I think when we connected a couple weeks ago or a few weeks ago, we talked, for I think it was almost three hours, yeah, so, like, and I and and you and I both love that conversation and getting into those ideas and kind of, then the more people are interested in it, the more like, if someone had questions, I'll gladly come back on and we'll have a whole entire talk about whatever question they had. It's fun. If it helps somebody, it's awesome.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I definitely would that exchange of ideas makes me feel like what we're doing is important.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I would love, definitely like do another episode and have you back on.
Speaker 2:That completely gets me back on track. It's awesome so this is great.
Speaker 1:back on. That completely gets me back on track. It's awesome. So this is great. Oh yeah, I'll be in touch with you, but we'll definitely plan on another episode. I do so much. Appreciate you being here.
Speaker 2:Oh, absolutely. Thank you for inviting me.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'll talk to you soon. So I want to thank everyone for joining us for this episode and to Daniel Thrasher, my guest. We'll have him back on and anyone has any questions for him. It's DanielsHandywork H-A-N-D-I-W-O-R-K. Yes, sir, on Instagram, until he gets a website. Yeah, I think we'll probably see you later. Feel free to contact him. He's a great resource. I think you picked that up from listening to everything he said here, so I want to thank you.