I want to apologise for disappearing on you all for a while. Not that I regret it... I am proud to see how well my lineage took care of you all. I am so blessed to have some very wonderful people supporting FST.
Mari mentioned training shamans as being a big source of burnout. Thats true. You know one shaman is Mari, she is my Priestess and heir to FST. The other prefers to remain anonymous but hes a wild card like me, except his shaman training got interrupted by soul loss at age 7 and he spent the next 40 years experiencing a whole lot of crazy. I have said shamans go 14 types of crazy during spirit training. This boy really did, had that many alternate personalities plus everything else. From anorexia to paranoid psychosis to MPD, PTSD, and the harshest case of unconscious passive aggression I have encountered yet. I took a lot of hits, and had no choice. Armand wired us together. The shamanic imperative to train him was so strong that the times I wanted to run, the cold death came warning me it would be the end of us both. For a time I resented the idea that training him was more important than my life and all my other work... surrendered it and got a new view. The work was so essential to my purpose and destiny that I might as well be dead if I did not do it. Resentment replaced with curiosity gave new strength. I was stretched beyond my limits so many times I lost track of where they even were. In the shamanic sense it killed me repeatedly and some days I got so worn thin I let it, taking the karma with me through the death gate like Sherlock Holmes going over the cliff with Moriarity. One friend compared me with a gladiator who kept going back no matter how many times beaten. Training him, and digging the real guy out from so many layers of crazy has been one of the hardest things I have ever done, and so rewarding. Along the way Goddess showed me ways to cure a whole lot of different types of crazy... and hes better at it than I am because hes been there. Absolutely no regrets.
When I look back on the enormous body of work and new discoveries that came of training both shamans, I am amazed. I went through my own process in the 90s, with no external support and seeing them walk the same road gave amazing insights of understanding my own journey and the nature of the training itself in a whole new way. Statistically, 1/3 of shamans called do not survive the training, and more survive but damaged. That is a horrible waste of life and talent. With what I have learned guiding these two I can make a huge dent in the survival statistics of shamans by providing a clear path to the road and how to deal with each step.
Most surprising for me in some ways is how much was regained. The mandate for selection of content for FST was that it had to be essential, it had to be elegantly simple as that is the mark of Goddess truth, and it had to be what *anybody* could learn to do if they applied themselves. Shamans find it useful but its not shaman training. No use teaching or demonstrating what only a tiny percentage of people are able to learn, it only frustrates and so a lot of my shaman powers fell so into disuse that I forgot about them, (especially the stuff that could be set on autopilot) until the new shamans had some experience that needed explaining and it came back. So really in guiding them I have reclaimed some forgotten parts of my own self. So rewarding.
The students who come to the chat parties regularly have learned a lot of stuff thats not in FST as I shared some of my new discoveries with them testing things out. Just iceberg tips really, but profound.
In the bigger picture, I embarked on a course of research 6 years ago that has shifted and intensified exponentially every two years since and the shamans were part of that orbit. In Dec I got some sense of completion there... and the first twinges of burnout. Two months vacation for recovery is an excellent bargain for all I have gained. Absolutely no regrets.
Thank Goddess for you and others like you, I know you send the praise back to her regardless but would any of us be receptive of her wisdom without it coming from beings like yourself. I am grateful. Thank you.
I agree with WillyT wholeheartedly. What a blessing it was last year, when I first stumbled on the sites you've created, Mystress, which later led me here to FST Mystery School. Thank you for all the wisdom you share.
Yes, it is a great luck!
Thank you for what you do and may you find enough time and space to recharge!
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