Spirit Teachers in Shamanism
Spirit teachers are the ones to whom the shaman is truly apprenticed. Certainly, a shamanic practitioner may have teachers and mentorship in what we commonly consider our ordinary reality. I am a teacher, for instance, and I have also had many teachers. However, when it comes to our shamanic practice, we are really 'learning how to learn' from the teachers who are in non-ordinary reality. That is who we need to seek out as we pursue our shamanic education.
What does a student learn from a spirit teacher? All sorts of things. Perhaps, about life in general, or maybe about the student's life in particular. Don’t anticipate that a teacher will necessarily show up as some profoundly ancient and wise-looking elder woman or man. Spirit teachers can appear to us in all sorts of shapes and sizes, generally a form that they know we need to see them in, in order to best enable us to learn from them at the time.
Spirit teachers may be quite good at one or another type of healing, or working with one or another kind of person. They tend to know more about you than you necessarily want, and they drive their lessons home with every indication that they are looking for your growth and to live into your potential. Otherwise, they won't give you the time of day.
It is generally the case that when you seek for a spirit teacher, you have a much better opportunity to find one in the shamanic upper world, as there tend to me more of them there.
The training and education of a shaman is different from that of many other people. I have to chuckle to myself when some of my students consider me a teacher. Nope, I am just a ‘finger pointing at the moon’ (to borrow from the Zen folks). The real teachers are spirit teachers, power animals, and the wealth of experience the practitioner gains in shamanic reality. As someone who teaches shamanism, I am just pointing in the directions where you will get your real education. Once you begin to develop a good shamanic journey ability, it is actually up to the teachers in the spirit world to provide you with your deeper instruction.
In my classes, I promise to do my best to be a lot more straightforward that our spirit teachers sometime are. However, my job is a lot easier than theirs: I simply show you the way to find your answers.