Spirit Hacking: Shamanic Keys to Reclaim Your Personal Power, Transform Yourself, and Light Up the World - Shaman Durek 2019

The Feminine Factor
From Darkness to Lit

As the Blackout unfolds, we find ourselves navigating more and more chaos in our relationships, as well as within the collective social construct. People are creating conflict, manifesting drama, breaking down, breaking up, and freaking out. This turmoil is a reflection of humans’ lack of emotional intelligence.

Our emotional intelligence deficiency is a direct result of the devaluing of the feminine, in all her many expressions, which means that to raise our emotional intelligence—as individuals, as well as a collective—we must understand how masculine and feminine energetics function in this reality.

EQUAL + OPPOSITE

Everything in our world is composed of energetic polarities. The interplay between equal and opposite energetic forces is what holds this reality construct together. Masculine and feminine are equal and opposite energetic forces that must be properly balanced if we are to live in harmony here on planet Earth. Our world is out of balance because, for quite some time, we have been overemphasizing the masculine while disregarding the importance of the feminine. This is why humanity’s emotional intelligence levels are so stunted—because we haven’t valued the feminine to the same extent as we have the masculine.

The Blackout is presenting us with an amazing opportunity to evolve into a new awareness of higher intelligence. To do this, we must restore balance and alignment to Earth, which means we must lift the feminine. Of course, this means empowering women to step into their greatness, and to be giant, and to lead the planet back into alignment. At the same time, we must also elevate feminine qualities in all people, regardless of biological (or even psychological) gender, while incorporating feminine energies into our society and our world. This can only happen when we acknowledge that men and women are different, and that masculine and feminine energies consist of very different qualities, and that both are valuable and necessary for the survival of the species.

MASCULINE + FEMININE ENERGETICS 101

The feminine is, by nature, intuitive and emotional. The feminine is about feeling, and flowing, and merging, and connecting, and relating. Masculine energy, on the other hand, is about structure, and placement, and task. It’s about patterns, and regimen, and routine. Masculine is about doing, and fixing, and achieving, and accomplishing stuff.

The feminine—which is, by nature, unstructured—is meant to be harmonized by the directed orientation of the masculine. Notice I said harmonized by, not dominated by. The masculine has long dominated the feminine by incorrectly equating emotion with weakness, and intuition with nonsense. In devaluing these qualities, both men and women have suffered, as has society, and Earth itself.

When the masculine and the feminine are in sync, they complement each other in a beautiful symbiosis. But when the ordered, problem-solving nature of the masculine is not balanced by the expanded, emotional perspective of the feminine, both become distorted.

While women tend to embody mostly feminine energy, and men tend to embody more masculine energy, we all carry masculine and feminine energetics inside us. Therefore, when I say masculine and feminine, I am referencing not just men and women, but I am also speaking to the natural polarity distinctions that determine how we perceive and engage reality.

When men and women are relating to one another from masculine and feminine energies that are balanced, they bring out each other’s strengths, and amplify them. The same goes for the world. When we, as a collective, bring the masculine and the feminine energetics informing our politics, and our culture, and our education, and our environment, and our economics, and our everything into balance, that’s when we will find ourselves thriving on a poprocks planet in a Giant Age for all.

LOGIC VERSUS INTUITION

Logic and intuition are fundamental masculine/feminine polarities. Logic is an intellectual reasoning construct that relies on facts, figures, data points, and deductive reasoning to establish whether or not something is true. Intuition is a means of perceiving reality through a far more subtle and intricate internal cognition process. Fundamentally, intuition is the synthesis of emotions and empathic energies, combined with the machinations of the central nervous system, the sympathetic nervous system, and the parasympathetic nervous system. These perceptual instruments collaborate to create a comprehensive sensory apparatus that allows us to perceive which energy frequencies are in alignment with our being, and with our environment, and which ones are not. Basically, our intuition is our internal yes, and our internal no.

Spirit Hack: Calibrating Your INS

To fully integrate these ideas, we cannot just process them with the cognitive mind. The mental body is amazing and all, but to get any kind of integrated understanding of anything, we must have our own personal experience of it. Shamanism is all about experience. It’s not about believing someone else’s words, or signing on to someone else’s so-called authority. Shamanism is about empowering ourselves by way of our own embodied experience. That’s what the spirit hacks are for.

This is a spirit hack to calibrate your internal navigation system (INS). Ancient shamans—who happened to be women—utilized this technique as a way to figure out where their itinerant tribes should settle, as it allowed them to decipher if there was water nearby, and if there was game nearby, as well as which plants were safe to ingest, and which ones were poisonous. Calibrating your INS is a way of connecting to your own personal compass, so that you can know when something is aligned for you, and when something is not.

§ Ground into your body with a few deep breaths. Place your awareness on your internal state by observing the rise and fall of your belly with each inhale and exhale.

§ Say, out loud: “Body, show me yes, so that I can feel it.”

§ Scan your body for sensations.

Notice what you feel, and where you feel it. It might be tingles in your solar plexus. It might be throbbing behind your eye. It might be a rush of energy in your chest. It might be a twitch in your elbow. It might be a scratchiness in your throat. It could be any sensation, anywhere in your body. When you identify a feeling and a location, you want to speak those details out loud (I’ll explain why in Part II, when we delve deeper into the spirit hacks).

§ Say, out loud: “I feel __________ in my _____________.”

§ Then, say, out loud: “Body, show me no, so that I can feel it.”

§ Scan your body for sensations.

§ Say, out loud: “I feel __________ in my _____________.”

You can use this spirit hack anytime you want to get clarity on a question or a situation. Like, if you want to go to the beach but you’re supposed to work, you can ask yourself: “Is it in my highest and best interests to go to the beach today?” Or, if you’re not sure the person you’ve been messaging with on that dating app is really worth the energy, you can ask yourself, “Is there any authentic alignment or connection worth exploring with this person?” And then listen for your body’s unique yes or no, and make an informed decision from there.

Now, in case it’s not already completely obvious, intuitive knowingness is not any less relevant than knowledge we deduce by logic. But because this culture has sought to demonize the feminine, and invalidate the feminine, intuitive knowingness is often derided and cast aside as nonsense, while logic has been elevated as the be-all and end-all of cognitive processes, much to the detriment of the species. You see, intuition is an extremely valuable asset when it comes to survival and adaptation, because it is the faculty that allows us to sense danger and imbalance before they actually manifest. The choice to elevate logic over intuition has had a profoundly negative impact on humans’ ability to clue into and correct the imbalances threatening our planet. It has also seriously hindered our ability and our willingness to develop our sensory faculties, as well as our emotional intelligence.

When “Logical” People Act Illogically

Shamanism is all about the feminine. It’s about feeling, and sensing, and trusting subtle inner cues. I deal with mysterious unseen energetic forces all day, every day; and I also deal with a bunch of so-called logical people trying to discount my practices, my healings, my experience, and my shamanic lineage as so much imaginary woo-woo, framed through their ignorant, distorted, masculine lens of perception. Can you imagine the nerve of these people, invalidating the entire spirit realm as bullshit just because they haven’t seen it, and they haven’t explored it, and they haven’t studied it, and they don’t understand it? I mean, the arrogance of human unconsciousness is just ridiculous.

For the record, logic is an assessment strategy that entails going on discovery, and doing one’s due diligence to either affirm or deny the veracity of the structure in question. A truly logical person has an idea about something, and then goes on the discovery process to gather data and proof to validate their idea as true or false. An illogical person spouts their opinion with no actual knowledge to back it up, while claiming the stuff coming out of their mouth is “logical,” because they’re parroting their indoctrination. It’s absurd.

If we are going to make it through the Blackout, people really need to start questioning their thoughts, and their beliefs, and start figuring out the truth for themselves. I mean, if people are going to claim to be logical, then they need to get freakin’ logical.

THE FEMININE UNIFIES; THE MASCULINE DIVIDES

The masculine is naturally oriented toward itself, and therefore, it prioritizes what it wants, and what it needs, and what’s going to serve it over the well-being of the whole, and the parts making up that whole. Now, let’s be clear. I’m not saying that men are divisive, or incapable of caring about the collective. I’m talking about how the masculine polarity is naturally oriented, and how it inherently expresses without its feminine counterpart balancing it out.

Fighting, warring, winning, dominating—these are all masculine concepts. The masculine sees the world through an us versus them/me versus you lens, framing others as adversaries to be triumphed over, rather than as allies to collaborate with. This orientation is informed by thousands and thousands of years of biological imprinting and survival programming from way back when we were tribal nomads living in very, very different conditions than we are today. These leanings and perspectives weren’t an issue when the feminine was equally empowered and respected, and when women were honored for their intuition, their sensitivity, and their emotional intelligence, because men and women were balancing one another out, and the planet was aligned and thriving.

Our modern world paints a very, very different picture, wherein we are disconnected from the feminine, while the masculine runs the show. This imbalance has us operating from an every man for himself kind of mentality, instead of attuning to the bigger picture of community and what serves the good of all. Having overemphasized the masculine to such an extreme, we identify as separate individuals competing against one another for limited resources, rather than as a unified species devoted to everyone’s well-being on a planet of abundance. When we entertain thoughts that tell us there isn’t enough for everyone, we are under the influence of the darkness, and thereby stuck in the maya, and operating in survival mode, where thriving is impossible, and the lit train makes no stops.

THE MASCULINE HOARDS; THE FEMININE GIVES

Lack consciousness wants us to believe that there is never enough, and that we have to fight over a limited amount of finite resources if we are to survive. The collective willingness to buy into the idea of scarcity, hook, line, and sinker is a direct result of our disconnection from the feminine nature of the planet itself.

The feminine gives. That’s what it does. Look at all that women give—to their children, to their partners, to their families, to their friends. Women will empty their well of every last drop, giving water to everyone in the village, and in their lives, so that everyone’s thirst can be quenched. It’s why I call women the divine givers.

Guess what else gives? Nature. The Earth is a feminine planet, animated by a distinctly feminine spirit, named Gaia. Gaia’s function is to provide—to constantly provide—because that providing is what generates harmony and balance on planet Earth. The sun gives. The moon gives. The trees give. The oceans give. Nature is always, always giving. If any part of nature was to suddenly get greedy and start hoarding its gifts, and withholding its offerings, every living species would die.

Humans limit, and hoard, and give their power away to lack consciousness because they are perceiving reality through the distorted masculine lens of you versus me. They don’t understand that the entire you-versus-me perspective is completely absurd. You versus me makes no logical sense, because it implies that it has to be one or the other. Like there’s not enough room or oxygen for both of us to exist. Earth doesn’t work like that. This isn’t an either/or planet. It’s a yes, and planet. It’s not like because the sun shines, the moon’s got to take a hike, or that for glaciers to exist, volcanoes have to be eradicated. Yes the sun shines, and yes the moon shifts the tides, and yes the volcanoes rumble, and yes all of nature does all its unique nature things without any lame separation hang-ups, because nature knows how to coexist. Humans are also part of nature, which means that if we’re gonna make it through the Blackout, we have to learn how to coexist as well. That means we have to embrace the feminine.

SEPARATION IS A SLIPPERY-ASS SLOPE

Whereas the masculine is primarily self-serving and therefore prone to employing division and competition to get what it wants, the feminine operates from an integrated perspective, seeking to harmonize, connect, and serve. The feminine utilizes emotion and intuition to attune to the well-being of the larger construct, as well as the parts it contains.

When we overemphasize the masculine, as human beings have done for centuries, we shut down our emotional and intuitive faculties, as well as our connection to/compassion for the whole. Thus disconnected from our planet, ourselves, and one another, we misperceive the world through the lens of separation. This allows us to rationalize the use of violence and aggression to achieve power and control, instead of promoting nurturing, heart-centered action in service to the greatest good of all. Today we are bearing witness to what happens when the balance swings too far in one direction for too long. We are witnessing a world starving for the feminine.

The imbalance between the masculine and the feminine has not only created the conditions for a hostile global environment, and for the Blackout itself, but it has also created cracks in our collective energy field—cracks through which we have allowed the darkness to seep in.

ENTER THE DARKNESS …

The darkness goes to great lengths to disempower the feminine, because women are wired for peace and inclusivity—neither of which feeds the dark realm. The matrix has to keep women down, because the conflict and the divisiveness the overbearing masculine continues to create are keeping the underworld alive and kicking.

In ancient times, when humans were aligned with nature and with spirit, there was harmony between men and women. Back then, each person played their role in service to the well-being of the whole in a beautiful, coherent symbiosis. Then the darkness up and shoved its nose in humanity’s business and infected men and women with a distortion frequency that has allowed the darkness to maintain a considerable amount of control over humanity.

The matrix knows it needs the feminine off-line to survive, which is why it infiltrates the minds of men and manipulates them into believing that feminine energy is weak. As we have bought into the programming that devalues and disconnects us from feminine energetics, we have also underestimated the power of women and disrespected the deep wisdom they hold. The darkness knows that if women were in power, and if emotion and intuition were valued and respected in our society, then we—as a harmonized collective—would sense the distortions and the imbalances in the system, tear the whole thing down, and redo it in a loving, sustainable way. But that doesn’t really serve the darkness’s agenda all that well, now does it?

THE LIFE CODE

You see, the darkness is smart. It knows that women carry the life code, and that women are wired to honor and protect life. The ancient Egyptians knew this as well, which is why the ankh is featured so prominently in their mythology. The symbol, which looks a lot like the whole vagina/birth canal situation, represents eternal life, because women are life givers. Women are the ones who continue to bring life to this planet, generation after generation after generation. Women’s wombs are imprinted with the life code inside them, meaning that the walls of a woman’s uterus are literally encoded with geometric symbols (the ankh included), which act as portals and sensory mechanisms that attune women to the balance and well-being of life on the planet.

Men don’t have the life code inside them. They are not concerned with the inner workings that allow an organism to sustain life and consciousness. Men are attuned to structure and function. This is why when a little boy encounters a butterfly for the first time, he wants to know how it works, and what it’s made of, and whether or not it bleeds; and he will go about trying to figure these things out by tearing off its wings and poking it with a stick. The feminine, on the other hand, is operating through a multitude of sensory apparatuses that allow females to intuitively understand that the butterfly contains the life code. So instead of hurting it, or mutilating it, or trying to figure out what its guts look like, the little girl will simply cradle the butterfly in her hands while marveling at its beauty, and its intricacies, intuitively sensing the creature’s delicate nature, its gentleness, and its majesty.

The life code is what allows females to sense quantumly. As we’ve already established, quantum means operating on multiple dimensions simultaneously. The feminine is quantum. Women’s sensory apparatus is quantum. And sure, we all have masculine and feminine energies inside us, but given that women carry the life code, women are sensing on a whole different level—make that levels.

THE MASCULINE IS LINEAR; THE FEMININE IS QUANTUM

Think of the masculine as a line, and the feminine as a circle. As a line, the masculine moves on a straightforward linear trajectory, which—when it comes to getting shit done—is amazing. Following the circular feminine is more like riding the loop on a roller coaster. One moment, you’re heading toward the sky; and the next one, you’re upside down; and then suddenly, you’re speeding down a steep drop into a giant pool of water. It’s a totally different experience.

Whereas women’s quantum, intuitive nature allows them to feel how a system functions internally, men are more drawn to the external structure that contains those functions. Women’s connection to the internal allows them to also understand why the external structure is misaligned but from a more expanded, informed perspective.

When we are assessing a situation through the lens of the linear masculine, we are sensing through a very narrow lens of perception that seeks to understand, and to problem solve, and to get what it wants and what it needs. When we are sensing through the quantum feminine, we are attuning to a multitude of factors—internal, external, visible, and invisible—while devoting ourselves to finding coherent balance among all constituent parts and players for the greater good of the whole. It’s a completely different frame of reference.

The matrix doesn’t want us sensing internal and external imbalances, and it certainly doesn’t want us sensing quantumly. When it comes right down to it, the matrix doesn’t want us sensing anything at all, ever, period, because were humans to be able to feel and perceive how imbalanced our world has become, we would take action to change it immediately.

SENSORIUM

One of the biggest reasons why humans are so deficient in emotional intelligence is because humans can’t feel their feelings. It’s very challenging to master our emotional state when we can’t actually sense our emotions in the first place. We’ve lost touch with our feelings because we’ve lost touch with our sensorium.

Sensorium is the body’s sensory apparatus. It allows us to not only feel our own feelings and energies, but also to feel other beings’ feelings and energies. When I say beings, I don’t just mean people. I mean trees, plants, insects, and animals, as well.

Shamans know what we know, and shamans can do what we do, because shamans’ sensorium is on point AF. Let me tell you, it is a very, very different experience of reality when we can actually feel the world we are living in—when we can feel the discord, and we can feel the love, and we can feel the anguish, and we can feel the joy, and we can feel the all of it. Most people are operating with a completely shut-down sensorium and have no idea what they feel, let alone what the trees, or the birds, or the parks, or the people around them are feeling. It’s sad, because most people have no idea how much they are missing out on.

It’s why I don’t drink alcohol, and I don’t do drugs, and I don’t smoke pot, and I don’t sip champagne at weddings, or bar mitzvahs, or on international flights. I don’t dibble-dabble—ever—because I’m a shaman, and even just the occasional dibble-dabble would quell my sensorium, and interfere with my ability to communicate with the spirits who come through me. Shamans maintain very clean, very pure vessels so that we can commune with the spirit realm. Especially spirit shamans, who aren’t using plant or animal medicines to move between worlds. I don’t intoxicate myself because my work as a shaman is dependent upon my having a strong sensorium. My sensorium is what allows me to be in a dynamic, engaged, communicative relationship with my surroundings at all times, which is crucial to being a shaman, because I never know when a spirit or an ancestor is going to come through, or give me instructions, or guidance, or a teaching, or a task to carry out.

The matrix doesn’t want you to have a strong sensorium. The matrix wants you to be a bobblehead. It wants you numb, and dumb, and disconnected, and checked out, so that you don’t notice that you’re a slave to a system that’s feeding off the misery that you can’t even feel is there. The matrix cuts us off from our sensorium by polluting our consciousnesses with a constant stream of disruptive, fear-based media input transmitted by way of news, advertisements, pop music, scary movies, and blinking neon signs perpetually screaming BANG! BANG!! BLOOD! GUTS! TERROR! FEAR! HORROR! DESTRUCTION! AWFULNESS!!!!!!! in our faces, all the time.

This onslaught of what I call aggravated stimulation disconnects people from their sensorium by flooding their systems with information that is wholly unnecessary for them to adapt and to thrive. The only thing aggravated stimulation serves is the darkness. Aggravated stimulation overwhelms us and creates disturbance frequencies in the body, mind, and spirit that further separate us from our intuitive capabilities and make it that much harder for people to feel the imbalances that are threatening the well-being of this planet at this time.

THE EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE THING

A quantum leap in emotional intelligence is absolutely, 100 percent necessary if humanity is to make it through the Blackout. There is no way around it. Emotional intelligence is key.

Because the feminine has been so degraded on this planet, humans have not been taught to engage their emotions in a healthy, useful manner. To society’s great detriment, the system has elevated the masculine propensity for reasoning over the feminine penchant for feeling. This imbalance has humans misidentifying emotions as some kind of shortcoming, thereby disregarding them, and barreling over them, while totally disrespecting the emotions’ sacred function to help us grow. This is actually what those New Age, goddessy types are referring to when they speak about the “return of the divine feminine.” They are talking about the healing of humanity’s emotional body. They are talking about this pivotal moment in human history when our species chooses to consciously evolve, and to realign this planet by raising our emotional intelligence.

EMOTIONS GET A BAD RAP

Humans have a lot of fear and judgment around their emotions, as though certain emotions are bad or wrong, and that if we feel those emotions, we are terrible people. The truth is: emotions are never wrong, and emotions are never bad. Emotions are energetic tools that allow us to feel what it is we are experiencing. They are markers from the universe saying You are here, now. Feeling our feelings is what allows us to connect to truth. How we choose to act upon those feelings is another matter entirely. That’s where emotional intelligence comes in. But judging our feelings for simply existing is straight-up absurd.

The problem is the mind, which is the masculine. The mind hijacks the emotions and tells the emotions that they are wrong, and tries to bully the emotions into pretending they are entirely different emotions altogether—emotions that are nicer, and more appropriate, and more socially acceptable. The kicker is that the mind’s attempts to control the emotions distract us from feeling the things we really are feeling, which only furthers the disconnect. When the mind tries to dominate and suppress the emotions, we experience conflict and imbalance in our beings. Kind of like what we’re seeing externally, on the planet itself. As above, so below. As without, so within.

This imbalance has led to a collective emotional intelligence deficiency, which manifests as repression and mismanagement of our emotions, as well as an overreliance on logic and reasoning as dominant life-navigation and reality-creation strategies.

EMOTIONAL MISMANAGEMENT

Because human beings have not been taught how to effectively manage, or relate to their emotions, they are easily overwhelmed by them. Emotional overwhelm manifests as emotional reactivity, which is a major, major issue on this planet.

Here’s how it works: we receive some upsetting news that triggers an emotional response in the body. The instant that data registers marks a choice point. In that moment, we can choose how we want to interpret those emotions, and how we want to express those emotions, and whether or not we want to take the opportunity to learn from those emotions. Those of us riding the lit train will absolutely milk those emotions for all the lessons they have to teach us, because we’re all about lifting and shifting, and we know that our emotions are here to help us evolve. But most people don’t take advantage of that opportunity, or that choice point. Most people don’t even know that such an opportunity exists, and that choosing different emotional responses is an option they can exercise in any moment. Humans don’t know these things, because they don’t teach us this stuff in school. Instead they teach us algebra, and how to regurgitate useless facts for even more useless grades, because schools are institutions of the matrix.

When we react, and we allow our emotions to overtake us, we generate an output expression that matches the exact same frequency band as the input stimulus that upset us to begin with. It’s really quite ridiculous, because all it does is perpetuate the emotions that are causing our suffering in the first place, while spreading discordant vibrations into the world, bumming other people out, and shaping our realities in kind.

You see, emotions color our reality. When we are in love, we experience the world as loving. We are vibrating at the frequency of love, and so we see love everywhere, because reality is being filtered through that lens, and that resonance. Just like if we’re sad, the world breaks our heart over, and over, and over again. But emotions don’t affect just our perception of reality; they also determine how reality manifests by sending out electromagnetic frequencies that attract people and events that vibrate in kind. Like, when we are feeling frustrated and impatient, the universe sends us red lights, and detours, and interruptions, and complications, because the emotional frequencies of impatience and frustration are attracting matching experiences. This is why it’s so important for people to stop giving their power away to fleeting emotions they don’t want to be feeling in the first place, because those vibrational frequencies are organizing our reality.

DOORWAYS TO POSSIBILITY

When we allow our emotions to overwhelm us, and we react, and we spew them back out onto others, and into the world, without having filtered them through the lens of consciousness, we limit ourselves from accessing the full spectrum of possibilities that are available to us as quantum creators. The whole reason we incarnate on this planet, in this dimensional construct, is so that we can walk through as many doorways and have as many different experiences as possible. So why do humans choose to impose so many unnecessary limitations upon themselves by narrowing their emotional output expression options through unconscious reaction patterns? It makes no sense. I mean, that’s what getting lit and living giant, poprocks lives is all about—expanding possibilities, not limiting them.

Shamans know that we are not our emotions. We don’t identify with them, and we don’t confuse them with the personalized construct of Self, which is why we don’t feel the need to defend our feelings. When shamans get triggered, it’s not about fighting, or lashing out, or shutting down, or freaking out. It’s about bringing consciousness to the feeling, and then managing it accordingly: I am having an emotion. An emotion is moving through me, and is animating my spirit. How interesting. Let me feel it, because I know it is fleeting, and that another emotion will soon be visiting my vessel.

In shamanism, we don’t relinquish our freedom to our emotions. We don’t give our power away to our feelings. Shamans train to raise our emotional intelligence so that we can consciously choose the emotional frequencies we want to generate, instead of defaulting to the frequency of the emotional stimulus, which only enslaves us to that input. We do this by utilizing shamanic principles of awareness and emotional perception that allow us to consciously generate our own authentic emotional responses, instead of having something from the outside world generate them for us. We do this by spirit hacking.

When we use shamanic principles to raise our emotional intelligence, we cultivate the ability to perceive our emotions with clarity and consciousness. This allows us to pause before we react, and to decide for ourselves if the emotional frequency that’s been triggered is one we want to generate more of, or if the emotional frequency that’s been triggered is one we want to let go. The act of bringing consciousness to our emotions in real time, as they are stimulated, and then deliberately choosing how we respond gives us the ability to perceive reality in many different ways. Emotional intelligence allows us to expand our perception and to access different pathways of thought, as well as action, by generating a new emotional response to something that would have overtaken us in the past, and then seeing which doorway that new emotional frequency opens, and where it’s going to lead us.

YOU ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR YOUR EMOTIONS

Emotional intelligence means taking responsibility for our own emotional state. So often people blame others for their internal experience in saying: You made me feel like this, or He made me feel like that, as though anyone has the power to make us feel anything, ever. It’s ridiculous. Feelings are internally generated energies. We are responsible for our own emotions.

I’m a no-bullshit kind of shaman, and I don’t beat around the bush, which means that sometimes my clients get upset at me for calling them out on things that they don’t want to look at. I once had a client say to me during our session: “Shaman Durek, you make me feel like shit.”

Now, if I were a narcissist or an underworld spirit, I probably would have been flattered by the idea that I was so powerful as to have control over someone else’s emotions. But the fact is that I am a love being, and a shaman, which means I wasn’t, and that I know better.

“I’m just being me, and showing up as I am,” I explained to my client. “Out of the hundreds of thousands of different frequencies of emotional experiences that you could possibly pull from the universal field of consciousness, and generate for yourself, you are choosing the feel like shit frequency. That’s on you, my love. But I am honored to be able to show up as a powerful reflection for you to be able to see what is already transpiring inside you.”

My client really didn’t like hearing that. Very few people want to hear that they are responsible for their experience of reality, and that if they want their reality to shift, then they must shift themselves. My client wanted me to sign on to her story, which painted her as a victim to my imaginary emotional control—not because me signing on to the story would make her feel any less shitty, but because me signing on to the story would allow her to be right.

HUMANS LOVE TO BE RIGHT

Pride has human beings thinking that they need to be right in order to feel safe. We lean on pride to keep us from feeling vulnerable, which is unfortunate, because being right is so dark ages.

Religious indoctrination has crippled humans with an almost debilitating fear of not being good enough, having programmed humans to think they need to embody some kind of idealized perfection to earn God’s love. As though God hoards love, and withholds love, and only doles out little bits of love sparingly to supermodels, overachievers, and Olympic gold medalists. It’s so ridiculous. This fear has made humans stubborn and arrogant when it comes to their ability—make that inability—to take responsibility for their issues, and their shortcomings, and for any form of discord in their lives. It’s a really misguided orientation, because Earth is a planet of refinement, but not perfection. There is no such thing as perfection, people! We are here on this planet to learn and to grow, and we do that by making mistakes, and by learning from them.

Humans have to evolve beyond the idea that having faults, and having weaknesses, and making mistakes necessarily make us wrong or bad. And humans also have to learn how to receive feedback about our issues with humility, and to learn how to put that feedback to good use. I count on my friends and family to call me on my shit, and to keep me humble. My assistant calls me out for being high maintenance. He’s right. I am very high maintenance. And even though it can be uncomfortable to hear that about myself when I’m caught up in the moment, and acting entitled and difficult, I appreciate that he cares enough to reflect back to me how I’m behaving, and how it’s not serving anyone, including myself. How else am I going to see what I need to see about myself, so that I can lift and shift, and expand my superhuman capacities? I mean, if I were playing the pain game, and defaulting to some evolve through pain nonsense, then sure, I could manifest some sort of terrible crisis to see what I need to see about myself. But I’m riding the lit train, which means that I choose to evolve through love. I choose to evolve through joy, and through consciousness, and through my relationships, while strengthening my connection to my tribe. Calling each other out on our bullshit is a generous and loving act, because when we do, we are choosing to step toward the other in reflecting back to them what their evolution is asking them to see about themselves so that they can grow.

THE FEMININE FACTOR

The Blackout is here, now, because the imbalance between the masculine and the feminine has reached a crescendo. The imbalance of emphasis we have placed on the masculine has infected all our foundational societal structures, which are steeped in rules, regulations, hierarchy, red tape, power plays, and authority issues. We see this narrow, logical, structural toxicity infusing our schools, our government, and our social services, just as we see it in justice, law enforcement, and religion, where—as it is currently functioning—it only serves to make us feel more separate from source than we would without all these churches and temples and mosques alleging to tell us how we’re supposed to worship Spirit, and live our lives.

The Blackout is an opportunity for us to tear down our already crumbling societal constructs, and to reenvision them through the lens of the feminine. We are being called to employ what I call the feminine factor to level-up our actions, our structures, our environment, our perspectives, and our relationships, so that they function harmoniously, in service to the well-being of all.

To do this, we must first foster the feminine in ourselves. We do this by balancing the masculine and the feminine in our own beings. We do this by raising our emotional intelligence, and empowering ourselves as quantum creators in a loving universe of infinite abundance.