13 Choices that Shaped my Life.

How often do you pause to think about decisions you have made that actively shape your consciousness? It bears contemplation.

A few years ago, I was doing an intensive series of sessions on dreams with my counselor. As a preamble to this process, she had be make a list of all my life’s traumas. It was, in a word, nauseating. It took a while to compose, too. I mean, who wants to sit down and list every awful thing they have endured? It can be a useful process, though, and it is something I have also been known to do with my own clients when we are doing “deep dive” work.

I think, similarly, when we do ancestral work, we are often looking at what needs to be “cleared” more so than what can be “claimed” because we tend to focus (from a survival standpoint) on what can hurt or kill us more than we focus on gifts, compliments, and positive attributes. It is how our brains are wired.

If felt good this morning to, instead, compose a list of decisions that I have made over the last 20 years that have actively shaped my consciousness, the way I see and interact with the world, and most importantly, my own values.

This quick contemplation brought into focus how the majority of my decisions are structured around this fundamental value:

I am committed to grow in clarity, compassion, functionality—and to be of benefit.

So here's my list life-altering choices starting with my decision, at 24—nearly 20 years ago!—to quit meth.

1. Quitting meth. I literally dropped it overnight—and never relapsed. I had support form multiple sources: family, community, and counseling. I also completely changed the environment in which it had been so accessible to me by moving to another state to start over.

2. Taking up journaling and shamanic journeying, on my own, mere weeks after quitting meth. I still have the journal where I recorded the "journey". It was as natural as breathing for me. I listened to an “instruction” CD one time, and away we went. This has been a now near 20-year-old practice of recording dreams, and exploring my inner world through journaling. It literally keeps me sane.

3. Attending a shamanic class where I was depossessed from the meth entity, and, subsequently, participated in a few sessions with that same practitioner to do some soul retrieval, and energetic repair work. *Side note* I “saw” the entity while in that class. I knew in a flash how it had coopted my own intuition to attain my poison of choice for the long years I “used”. Removing it left me raw and open, as in able to hear through walls, hear other people’s thoughts, and feel everyone in about a 2-mile radius. Hence the followup “repair” sessions with the shaman.

4. Participating in transpersonal hypnotherapy sessions. For 7 years. Then continuing with my somatic/Jungian counselor, who I've also worked with for another 8 years now.

5. Attending a massage school whose curriculum included learning about traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), as well as cranial sacral, and other subtle energy modalities. This, too, I started a few months after quitting meth; it helped detox my mind, my body, replenish my spirit, and gave me the foundation for my career. It also introduced me to a dear friend.

6. Becoming a public speaker, and teaching a "quantum” transformational modality. This opened me up to the "collective" consciousness like you would not believe. But it also provoked some deep trauma from me which I was not equipped to deal with, and the modality was NO suitable to attend.

7. Certifying as a transpersonal hypnotherapist (with the person who I had seen as a counselor for all those years). I use these skills everyday.

8. Quitting teaching that modality when my "guides" told me it was no longer safe.

9. Discovering the framework of Gnosticism, and embracing a model of a living planet. Falling in love with Her.

10. Claiming my own witchhood. I mean… it’s who I am, as a woman, as a mother, as a mystic, as a living devotee to Her. I always have been and I have always known it, but something clicked in the last few years where it is seeping from my bones and my womb. I open my mouth and serpents slip from between my lips to writhe and coil around certain souls, and every gawd-blessed situation I find myself in. Resurrection. Discernment. Magic. Adoration. Relationship.

11. Discovering somatic work, engaging in the practices for my own healing—and learning how to apply them with my client work.

12. Attending a writing course! Not only did it help me “find my voice", but it gave me a platform where my words have "touched" hundreds of thousands of people. Literally. I published a piece for the site that went viral. 183.9 K views. (Yes, I’m bragging. I earned it.) “‘Positive Vibes Only’ is Toxic: the Danger of New Age Spiritualism.” When this was published, it was utterly awe-inspiring to watch it circulate, and the number of readers just keep climbing. Yeah! I wrote that.

13. Writing! Forever. Always. As long as I can remember. And until I die.

All these decisions are life-shaping choices I actively made.

The thing I didn't choose was to be born into a "new age" cult, but that definitely shaped my consciousness, as well. Not only for my exposure to many world philosophies, but maybe mostly so because of the rural environment in which I was raised. I lived in the mountains. ( I do again.) I breathed them, and spoke to the rivers. We’ll put aside any traumas incurred, and focus on the majesty of being raised a few miles from Yellowstone Park. Summers on the river, and winters spent playing outside until we developed frostbite. I know my nervous system and psyche are better for having been raised this way. I still yearn for it. It marked me forever, and as a mystic.

Looking at this list, I realize when you're on this "path", nearly every choice you make is in service to it, or avoidance. But even that merely holds us in place until we're ready to move forward.

Feel free to share some choices which have shaped your life path in the comments, if so inspired. I love hearing your stories, too!

Love,

~Justice

PS: I would probably add developing my own sense of style as a totally consciousness shaping practice, too!

Cheers!