WYRD?

Tell me, is wyrd relating to Word?

Word - Wired - Weird - Wyrd........

And what does that have to do with Shaman?

Goethe said "Daring ideas are like chessmen moved forward; they may be beaten, but they may start a winning game."

Shamanism is the earliest spiritual practice known to humankind, dating back tens of thousands of years. The word “shaman”, literally translated as "one who sees in the dark", is a Siberian word for a spiritual healer. Shamanism has been practiced throughout history and continues to this day among most cultures in the Americas, Europe, Africa, Australia, Greenland and Asia.

Shamanism is a path of direct revelation. The practice of shamanic journeying helps us to part the veils between the seen and unseen worlds and access information and energies that can help awaken us and restore us to wholeness. A shaman or shaman practitioner is a man or woman who interacts directly with spirits to address the spiritual aspects of illness, perform soul retrievals, divine information, help the spirits of deceased people cross over, and perform a variety of ceremonies for the community. They take on many roles in communities acting as healers, doctors, rabbis and priests, psychotherapists, mystics, and storytellers.

Many years and many lifetimes were to be lived before realizing that shamanism was my home. It was in the early days when I was living with Baba Muktananda that I accepted the spiritual name he bestowed upon me. It was in those days that I only felt comfortable being called the name I was given when I was living within the Siddha Yoga community. My birth family already thought I was too "weird". I knew they would never go for calling me anything other than what they thought was my name, and especially since it wasn't Jewish. They didn't realize they had already given me many names: Jacke (without an "i") (OY if that wasn't challenging enough?), Jacke Lynn, Loke, Locus, Cookie, Etachasha, J., Jerky Jacky, Fats, Jakala, Cookala.

Now if they could have heard all of them spoken at the same time, together, they might not really have thought that "Gopita" was so weird! I stood in line for hours to receive that name. With baited breath waiting to look into Baba's timeless, limitless eyes...waiting to feel the sweet breeze swift around and through me, waiting to smell the fragrant aroma of the Blue Pearl Classic Champa incense, the original floral blend based on sandlewood....On the box read "so'ham, Thou Art That. That Thou Art. God Dwells Within You As You. See God in Each Other." Jewish families didn't burn sandlewood in my Baltimore ghetto neighborhood....At 24 I was in a new land, a new culture, and I felt like I was home when Baba bestowed me with that name, when he gave me shaktipat with his wand of glorious peacock feathers.

Shaktipat...awakening my kundalini energy....I didn't even know I had energy, that kind of energy, the kundalini kind. It was magical being given that name. In pure ritual form Baba handed me a piece of paper while emitting the oceans from his eyes into mine. He held my hand as I swam into the vastness of all that is. I looked. I saw. Beautifully scripted, "Gopita". I liked it. I felt proud of it. I liked her sound. But wait they motioned to me; that wasn't all? An instuction came to turn the paper over.

WHOA! "One who keeps the secrets"...that was the name he was giving me?!...that was what he was awakening my realization to?!...that's what he wanted me to know about myself?!...that I already was "wired", that I Am and will continue to be one who keeps the secrets. I wondered at that moment what secrets he was talking about.......hehe.

wyrd: It's an Anglo-Saxon Norse word which means essentially “that which has become”. We interact with wyrd (that which has become) to create certain personal patterns which affect and are reflected in universal patterns. Those universal patterns, in turn, exert forces which shape our lives.

WYRD SHAMAN