Curanderismo Soul Retrieval: Ancient Shamanic Wisdom to Restore the Sacred Energy of the Soul - Erika Buenaflor M.A. J.D. 2019

Simon Connects with His Divine Guidance
The North: The Space of Ancestral Medicine and Guidance

When Simon first came to me, he had been through several years of traditional therapy, which he said helped him greatly in forgiving the bullying he had experienced in school. He was now a successful architect, in a happy marriage, and a father of a young girl and boy. Although he had made great strides in life, he still suffered cycles of depression and felt something was missing in his life. He did not know what that was. He had been on antidepressants for almost a year, which lessened the intensity of his depression, but he still could not shake the feeling that something was not right and missing. He also wanted to stop taking the antidepressants.

During Simon’s middle-school years, he endured severe bullying. It was so grave that his family relocated so that he could start fresh after he had turned thirteen. Along with ongoing daily name calling, the kids wrote graffiti on his locker and gym clothes. They deflated his bike tires on a periodic basis. They also locked him inside the storage closet after beating him up. After the physical assault, his family made the decision to relocate.

In our first journey together to the South, we found him as the essence of a young boy hiding in a cave of the Underworld. The young boy was shell-shocked and appeared to be shape-shifting into different human appearances that definitely had Simon’s energy signature. I informed this young boy about the beautiful family Simon had and his success in his career. I told him that he no longer endured bullying; on the contrary, he was very well respected and deeply loved. I also explained that the separation was not helpful for either one of them. Simon the adult missed this soul piece and wanted to nurture him. We invited the young boy to come home into Simon’s sacred heart. This soul piece declined and said he wanted to remain in the cave.

Thereafter, we went to the Underworld earthkeepers for guidance and to determine whether the trauma stemmed from his childhood bullying. One of my spirit animals, the owl, guided me into another cave. The owl usually comes to me when I am going to a past life or critical past event in the same life and shows me the way there.

In this other cave I was led into what looked like a movie theater. I took a seat, and a gigantic movie screen appeared before me. There was something I had to see to help me to help Simon on his soul retrieval process. On the screen came up what looked like a high-school parking lot from the 1950s, to judge by how the people looked and the clothes they were wearing. I saw a group of three young teenagers hurrying to get into a car. Although it was a different person, I could sense that the driver had the same energy signature as Simon and was indeed Simon. They were very excited and were in hot pursuit of another car. They caught up with it and began yelling at the teenager driving it. The teenager who was being pursued was not paying attention to the road, crashed into something, and veered off the side of the road. The scene fast-forwarded to the hospital, and the boy who had been chased by Simon in a previous life died at the hospital.

Then I saw what looked like an older version of Simon. He was sitting on a couch with a beer in his hand. It appeared that he had a family, but this Simon did not feel happy. I had a strong sense that he had been a bully in another life and, worse, had probably contributed to the death of his victim. Because of this guilt and trauma, a part of his soul left in his past life and was still missing. This missing soul piece was attracting analogous karmic patterns in Simon’s current life. I also sensed that raising awareness of the dangers and detriments of bullying was going to be an integral part of Simon’s soul retrieval process.

After our sessions working with the South and West, he spoke to his thirteen-year-old son and eight-year-old daughter about his own experiences with bullying. He taught them never to engage in such behavior and made recommendations about how to be assertive if they encountered any kind of bullying. When working specifically with the West, he released residuals of deep-seated shame about being bullied. He also continued to do breathwork exercises that stimulated his solar plexus and heart chakra to further embody divine power for his family.

It was then time to go to the North for ancestral medicine and guidance. Simon was not necessarily an atheist, but faith in anything other than what was concretely tangible was not part of his belief system. When we journeyed to the North, I asked the spirits of the North to show us how to help him develop his faith and awe and wonderment for life. We found him as his adult self on the top of a mountain in the Middleworld. I asked him what he was doing. He told me that he was listening to messages from the mountain and the sky. I asked him what these messages were relaying to him. He told me that they were teaching him how to be in peace and stillness. I asked if he could return to Simon to teach him how to listen to the divine within nature. He told me that Simon was not ready to listen, and he, the soul piece, would remain where he was. After our journey, we had a platica about Simon’s faith or lack thereof. I asked him about his experiences in nature and whether he had ever felt a great sense of peace and stillness there. He told me that many times in his life he had attained peace and serenity when he was outdoors hiking.

The messages from the North urged him to connect to his divine presence and develop his hope and faith. As part of his work with the North, I requested that he go hiking, even if they were brief hikes on a biweekly basis, and to sit for 10 to 15 minutes and continue to connect with the ancestors and ask for soul healing, medicine, and guidance. I also asked him to bring offerings for the natural elements and wildlife, such as sage, tobacco, cornmeal, or minerals, when he went. When he began his offering and hiking rituals, he had encounters and synchronicities with deer and very friendly crows, who left feathers for him as gifts.

The ancestors in the North continued to guide and praise his growing faith, awe, and wonder in nature, which progressively began to seep into his everyday life. He began to remember that there was something divine and loving always around him, and he began to feel a deep sense of gratitude for the small things in life, such as his children smiling and playing with him, his wife’s cooking, and his freedom at work. In our next journey to the North, we found the soul piece on top of the mountain again. I told him about all the things Simon was feeling and opening up to. This time this piece was ready to come back. I guided Simon to shine a light of love to it and welcome it back into his sacred heart. The return of this piece was critical for Simon. He began to appreciate his family, career, and all the things he was blessed with even more. He eventually got off the antidepressants, and we went out to the East to welcome home the soul piece that we had found in a cave in the Underworld.