The Soul Is Immortal by Jan Engels-Smith
In the shamanic belief the soul is immortal. This belief is common to several of the religious and spiritual doctrines of the world. What does immortal mean to you? It can be difficult for the human mind to conceive of the concept of immortality – especially for the left brain. Being left-brain dominant in Western culture, most of us tend to think in linear time; that there is a beginning and an end to every event. Immortality says that this is not true; instead, the soul is eternal, existing forever. It always was, always is, and always will be. The soul stays in the constant state of Now, which encompasses all of time. The right brain has no concept of past or future and also exists in the constant world of Now. Shamanism is more easily understood from the right brain domain.
Shamanism sees the soul as a shape-shifter. You can be any shape – an animal or a tree or a cloud or a ray of sunshine. You could be the Earth. You can be an intergalactic being; maybe someone from a different star system. All of these expressions of the soul are a part of the richness of wisdom inside you. You can be anything and you are everything. You have forever to experiment and try different experiences. You will choose where to focus your consciousness in any given moment, and then that moment will change and you will move your focus. Time is everlasting.
Our left brain likes to see in a linear way. We like repetitive patterns and ways to compartmentalize, so that life makes sense to our rational mind and gives us some kind of structure that we can understand. The soul, the spirit, exists in a nonlinear universe where all is one and time and place are not the defining conditions of life. If you wanted to put it in scientific terms, our mind wants to perceive the world in Newtonian constructs, where all things are compartmentalized and fragmented. But the soul is actually in the Quantum field where it is omnipresent, can shape shift and change form, and where existence is defined in non-rational ways. The soul merely exists without rational definition; it simply is.
Your form is continually changing shapes in order to experience different realities. It is a free Spirit that can choose to be human or any other form of matter. It is free flowing, moving from one identity to another. I am wood, I am eagle, I am sunshine, I am a string on a harp, or I am a letter on a page in a book. In shamanism everything is alive and has intelligence. Everything that exists can be and is a part of your soul’s experience. And with immortality, you will experience it all at some time, at the same time. Actually you are experiencing all of your existences simultaneously. However, that concept takes a while to get used to!
There is an awareness of all that exists inside of you. Your different life expressions become what we call your signature, or your imprint. When you tap into these other lifetimes, you can recall or find out about those experiences of what you were or who you were. And these experiences are all happening at the same time; they are all happening now. Your right brain knows this. Since journeying is a right brain function we can experience this truth more easily while we are journeying.
The vastness of the world is often greater than what our mind can comprehend. Our left brain wants to contain, describe, and limit things. In this limited reality, the question of “Who am I?” stays in a small, restricted container based on this Earth experience. I am female, this is my profession, and this is what I look like.
Shamanism says something different and inspires a person to discover the vastness that is actually inside of you – what you have access to if you would step out of the box and realize that you have these attributes and incredible parts of your being that are magical and profound.
Many people that are positively disposed to this kind work are drawn to the topic because they have done this in different lifetimes. You might have been a healer, a shaman, a medicine person, or somebody that sees the future. So you have a propensity and a desire to continue with that learning as you experience this lifetime. You are drawn to certain essences and natures because it is in your soul; it is in your cells. Your love of nature may indicate that you were a part of nature at one time: a deva, faery or an elf. Let’s say you see a piece of art and feel a deep, connecting love. Who knows, you may have been the artist in another lifetime. Why do you love and commune with crystals? Maybe you were a crystal.
Try to conceptualize this wisdom that we carry inside of us. Who are we? A bat, grass in a meadow, a leaf on an oak tree, a mountain, or perhaps a stone or a wisdom keeper that has been around for millions of years. A million years is but a moment in immortality. You keep incarnating. You might be on the planet Earth for a while, and then you might be on a different planet. You could be a star! There are endless possibilities.
So as we take our awareness out of that little box, we can indeed sense the vastness of the life force that beats within us. It is not just about this life. There is a vastness to you that is far beyond this particular lifetime. This is where our focused attention is, right here and now, but let us not just limit ourselves to that. As you become unlimited in your awareness of space and time, you open yourself up to a much greater understanding of what life actually is – not just human life, but all life, even in the landscape, or a drop of water, or the ocean, or any of the various objects you might imagine yourself to be.
In shamanism there is no linear time. Therefore, there can be no “past” life because other lives and other lifetimes are all happening simultaneously. Your soul is vast, and all of these other lifetimes are happening in other dimensions of time and space. You are consciously focused in this reality, which creates a sense of realism. However, you can alter that focus and transport your consciousness into a different reality. Therefore, journeying can create unlimited possibilities. At more advanced levels of shamanic practice, you can travel into another person’s lifetime and create modifications designed to bring healing. Yes, you can affect the past; you can heal it and give it a new ending. It is all possible. Because, in this understanding there is no past, there is only Now.
In a journey, as we move through space and time, we transport to any time dimension or timeframe and explore that particular landscape and the events connected to it and heal what needs to be healed. That is what makes shamanic healing so powerful. The point that is causing you so much trouble in this lifetime may not have started here. It may have started in some other lifetime. We do not need to fix this life; we need to fix the previous life and heal the source of the problem. In fixing that life, this life automatically adjusts. So our ability to do healing is vast; there is nothing that cannot be healed. Everything is possible in this realm; it is only hindered by the limited thinking process of the individual. If you cannot envision in your thoughts or you cannot imagine it or are not willing to have it as a possibility, you cannot create it. Energy follows intention.
You can travel to what we call the future and see what is potentially going to happen. If you do not like what is happening in that future, you can change it. There is a probability of a future occurrence that is in motion that was predetermined by your past thinking and your previous actions. But probabilities can be changed. If you do not like what you see coming, you can change the matrix of energy that is holding it in that pattern of probability.
In shamanism there is an understanding that small adjustments in our current existence create a rippling effect through the future that can result in dramatic alterations – the “butterfly effect” – where a butterfly flapping its wings in one part of the world can ultimately effect the actions of a hurricane at a future time and a distant place. Such is the nature of an alteration in our thoughts today shifting the energy that forms our future. That is what I love about shamanism. There is nothing that is impossible to do energetically. You can change DNA and create different outcomes. You can change propensities of illnesses that are supposedly genetic. Our belief system is the determinant of our future.
What the practitioner is able to envision for the client and what the client is able to envision for himself or herself provides the energy for potential change and allows us to be the active agent in creating our future. Far from helpless and hopeless, we have the power to be that which we desire and fulfill the destiny that the universe has created for us. But we need to make the choice to do that.