Hypersensitivity & Collectivity

This blog entry is written by Mary Rose Lessoway

Each day is so full lately that it is hard to take time to reflect and integrate everything. 2012 seems to have accelerated the pace of life. Being on a Shamanic path brings a lot of consciousness and richness to my life. I am becoming more and more aware of how collective we all are and how hypersensive we are whether we know it or not...

I made some dreamcatchers for the a friend's grandchildren, ages 7 and 4 and ended up living what the children were living. It took two days to do one of them, the other one I did in one morning. I have never met these children and was amazed at how accurate my experiences were after finding out their stories. I put a lot of energy and prayers into those dreamcatchers in hopes that the family issues that the children are living will be healed. I had to do the process of living the issues in my body and mind...  and then changing the patterns, changing my attitudes of negativity, lack of self-value, sibling rivalry, confusion... and more. As WW said, there's more to making a dreamcatcher than meets the eye when you are working with consciousness.

Nothing in Shamanism is mundane or superficial. We live everything down to the bones, to the very DNA of our existence. We explore the physical, emotional, mental, spiritual and dreaming bodies... We live and explore our souls on ego, totemic and ancestral levels. All parts of us are interconnected. One affects the other. The same goes for relationships. We are all connected and all have an impact on one another.

When we work on our ego (moons/inner children), we are also healing our Ancestral stories (past lives and  future generations). When we explore our Totems and inner community, we are growing on levels that stretch the imagination and reach to the heart of the earth and out to the farthest stars.

When things happen, we look for the deeper meaning behind them. We live the experience all the way through until we get to the wisdom of the lesson. 

Yesterday, my fridge died... it started konking out a few days ago, then it just died. I had been wanting to clean it out the past week, but there was so many other things to do, I felt myself reluctant to take on the task when I was busy winterizing the yard, cleaning out the garage, changing rooms around in the house, working on my writing, etc. etc... the fridge was a ways down on my to-do list, but it was nagging at me. I wonder if it was trying to tell me something?

I was finally forced to clean the fridge out because we had to get another one. Fortunately we had an old fridge in the basement that wasn't being used, from when I had a tenant. When cleaning the burnt-out fridge, I was shocked to see how many half-used bottles of sauces and left over food containers were in there. It was so full that I didn't even know what was in there. I had to throw out a lot of food because the freezer died overnight and everything was thawed out when I looked at it in the morning. 

I am a person who hates waste of any kind. I hate wasting food most of all. It feel sinful to me to buy things that we don't use, yet I find myself doing it. I have cupboards full of fabrics, crafts, food, and other items that sit there unused for various reasons. I find myself continuously cleaning out cupboards, moving things around and throwing things out or giving them away. Yet the STUFF still accumulates. It;s like a fungus that grows and grows... letters and coupons and notices from the mail sit on my desk waiting to be sorted out. Then I find myself going to the extreme of keeping things because I don't like to waste, I don't like to throw out things that are not recyclable, I don't like throwing out food. I remember a time when we were poor and that seems to have left an imprint on me.

We live in a country and province that is rich. We have more than we need, more than we can use, yet it never seems to be enough. I feel overburdened by too many possessions. I hate shopping because I don't want to bring home any more stuff! I remember a time in my life when I would walk into a grocery store and walk out with nothing because I didn't have enough money for food. Life was hard back then, but there was something about the simplicity of having next-to-nothing, living down to the bones.

My parents were packrats to the Nth degree. It took me years of garage sales, trips to the landfill and goodwill stores... to clean it all out. Now I am doing the same thing they did. It seems out of my control. I am constantly trying to get on top of it, but the energy of hoarding still lives in this house and we are all noticing it. We are doing our best to change the story.

We live in Alberta, an oil rich province that is all about money! The collective energies put into accumulating material possesions is ming-boggling! The excess gathering of material objects is often an attempt to fill the emptiness inside. But it is only a temporary fix, then the cravings for more stuff comes back. The Tibetans call it the "Hungry Ghost Syndrome".


Last week WW, RW and I took a walk south of town. We ended up laying down a circle of stones because the land called for healing. I had been feeling a deep sadness on the walk. WW was disoriented and our compasses went crazy. I came across a beaver who had just chewed down a tree. The tree fell on top of some other trees and the beaver wouldn't be able to use it as a result. It was a waste of a healthy, living poplar. We saw that as a synchronicity. The theme of waste and the destruction of nature was being repeated.The busy beaver syndrome is rampant in our society... work, work, work to buy more, more, more....  If the beaver had been able to use the tree than its demise would have served a purpose - to feed the beaver and build the beaver dam. They cut down a tree for the branches on the top and leave the rest....

When we chew off more than we need, we are being excessive and wasteful. Overeating is also a pattern in our rich province. The ratio of overweight people per capita is the highest in the country. 

We found out later that that area where we built the Wheel was an old landfill site! What would our ancestors who lived off the land think of our world of excess garbage today?The guardians of the land were asking for help. The metal in the landfill was affecting our compasses. It was affecting our bodies. How many people realize that the land and the stories in the land affect them? We often live out experiences related to what came before us due to the imprint left behind. What imprints are we leaving behind for others?

I have traveled through cities where I felt so much violence that I couldn't get out of there fast enough, only to discover it was the site of a historical battle. I've done house and land blessings for places where someone had committed suicide or done heavy duty drugs. The people living there would be having nightmares, eery feelings, even suicidal thoughts or addictive cravings... and hauntings.  Children especially are sensitive to the energies of a place. Some of them will act out and express fear because they see or feel the negative forces. They also will act out their parents issues. Dogs and cats will act out their owners issues or take on their illnesses. We are all connected, no one is separate or alone. We can feel someone on the other side of the world if we are connected in some way to them.

Hypersensitivity can feel like a curse, but it is a tool for learning and healing. It takes discipline and awareness to master it to the point that you can be functional in it. Sometimes you think you're going crazy because you are feeling things that don't make any sense to your story. We are all hypersenstive to some degree, some more than others.

When we become aware of what or who we are feeling, we can choose what to do with it. We can talk to the person, we can pray for them or work it out of our body. It helps us to understand what others are living and have compassion and empathy. We are only hypersensitive to what is compatible to us, to our stories. If we are prone to depression, we will feel the sadness of others. If we are prone to anger, we will sense it in those around us.

Hypersenstivity can also be a tool for survival. If you can feel that the strangers coming towards you on the street mean harm, you can get out of the way before they get too close. Of course, you have to be able to differentiate between hypersensitivity and fear or pananoia.

People can be deceptive, dishonest or have ulterior motives. Hypersensitivity helps you see through the deception to the truth of the matter, to see past the illusions. But it takes time to get to that point. I am still amazed at how I can be living something that is not mine! Our teachers are experts in hypersenstivity and know what we are feeling even when we don't know ourselves until it is pointed out to us.

My teacher says that 10% of what you feel is yours. If you work that 10% you are helping the collective. Imagine if everyone did their part, we could all heal so much faster. But when we have only a small handfull doing their work, it is hard for us to move forward in our evolution of consciousness as a species.

The SHAMaN is a collective creature and extremely hypersensitive. Contrary to many others... most of what they  live is not theirs. They work the imbalances through their bodies to bring balance to the earth, to nature, to the collective. They use their hypersenstivity to see what the collective is living and what is needed to restore balance.