Learning from My Teacher

Here is an experience I had many years ago, during a three-year training program in shamanic healing that I participated in. 

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by Adam Bosler



In the circle, when we were asked to think of a powerful healer from the past , I knew instantly which healer I wanted to visit and ask permission to work with. I have felt a deep connection to this person since I was a very small child. I had spent many years studying this healer's life and methods.

This healer continues to be a compassionate spirit I regularly go to for advice and teachings. At that point in my training, I had spent about 6 years using the core shamanism methods to try to deepen my life-long connection with this particular healer.


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 When I journey, I often feel like I am sitting in the dark. Using the core shamanism method of repetitive drumming, the visions that come to me are often faint glimpses against a background of utter darkness. As the drumming continues, and I repeat my question or request, like a mantra, suddenly a flicker of an image will flash through my awareness. It feels like something is sent to me telepathically. Spirits seem to communicate with me in these very quick and fleeting bursts that are filled with meaning for me, based on my own personal history and experiences. It feels as if my thoughts and memories are being used as a kind of very basic language or communication system. 

I asked the healer to show me where I can meet him. An image of an ancient Egyptian pyramid was sent to me. I recognized it immediately from previous journeywork I had done over the past couple of years. It was a pyramid I had been to many times before, but only to see the outside of the structure. This time, the healer directed me to enter the pyramid through an opening in one side of it. I felt myself moving down a long corridor, as I travelled along this narrow stone hallway, deeper into the center of the pyramid. I felt the distinct message from the healer, telling me: “Any time you need me, I can be found inside this pyramid, down this long corridor.” The very instant I understood that part of the message, I found myself back in the darkness.

I went back to simply repeating/chanting my intention for the journey: “Please show me where it is I can meet up with you… Please show me where I can meet up with you…”

The healer took me to a place I had read about in a Bible story. It is a community well, where people would gather to get their daily water. In the biblical narrative, this is a place where the healer saved a woman’s life, when some men from the town were about to throw rocks at her and stone her to death for the crime of adultery. In the story, the healer asked the men to look into their own hearts, and if any of them were completely blameless and free from imperfection, then cast the first stone. When the woman looked up, she saw that the men had all left, and the healer then told her that he was not there to accuse her of anything. She rose to her feet, got her water, and went on her way.

I had the distinct feeling that the healer was letting me know that he could also be found anywhere people stood up for the rights of the oppressed. I would find the healer whenever I stood between the angry mob and the person they were going after. 

The very second I understood this point, as if to reinforce what the teacher was trying to communicate to me, I felt one of my recent memories being activated, or triggered. The teacher flipped through the filing cabinet of my own life experiences, pulled a file and threw it, open, on the desk of my consciousness.

​A scene began to play in my mind — of the time recently when I had participated in the Resist March in Los Angeles, to stand up for LGBTQ rights. There was a moment during the five-mile march when we came around the corner to be met by a crowd of right-wing Christian evangelicals shouting angrily at us, and waving signs with slogans like “Homosexuality is a sin” [and other slogans I do not care to repeat].

As we turned the corner where these bigots had gathered, we marchers responded by booing and yelling over the top of the mean-spirited “Christians.” We were louder than them, and we drowned out their hateful bigotry. And we just marched right past them, our throng of people standing up for “loving acceptance of all people.” My teacher, the healer, was with us that day as we quickly left behind the hate-filled ones we had encountered on our path. 

This memory of the Resist March, I knew, had been brought up by the healer, as a way of reinforcing this idea: he can be found anywhere people stand up publicly for the rights of the oppressed.

Another plunge into darkness. I am still on the journey to ask the healer: “Where do I find you? Where is the place where you and I can meet?”

I am now shown a trail where I regularly go hiking. On this trail, there is an abandoned concrete circle that sits high up in the foothills, overlooking the valley where I live. I get the distinct impression that the healer is telling me, “When you hike up into the hills, to sit and meditate, and you look out over the city from up above it all, that is where you can meet me. That is where I can be found.” I was being shown a way to power-up my relationship with the healer, by more regularly visiting these places in the hills I had been hiking to for 40+ years. 

Feeling that I had received a thorough answer, I then asked my second question: How did the healer actually perform his healings? What was the method he used? He answered by showing me his way of powering-up his hands, wrists, and forearms by calling on “the power of the universe.”

He explained that it was compassion for those who are suffering that made it work. He reminded me how he spent a lot of his time, when he lived in the Middle World, hanging out with people who were suffering in some way.

The healer showed me that the healing he gave was often delivered to people using his hands. He powered-up his hands, then laid them on the shoulders or the forearms of the person who needed healing. I was struck by how simple the technique was. The healer showed me that he could feel a very particular buzzing sensation in his hands, when they were properly powered-up by the “spirit of the universe.” [That was the phrase he used.]

The healer reminded me again that it was compassion and understanding for others, especially for those who are suffering, that made the technique work.






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