Crows Nest Mission in 2013
The first mission of Crows Nest Centers for Shamanic Studies International has three components. The primary component is to facilitate the evolution of better humans, better ways of being on this planet through awakening, activating, and expressing heart-open and earth-honoring shamanic potentialities that reside within us all. Our mission is to help you bring forth what is within you. This statement “If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you.” The author is the Shaman Jesus, in the Gospel of Thomas.
The second component of our mission is to provide experiential education and training to the public, to help people develop the shamanic capacities latent within them, to become heart-open and earth-honoring co-creators and care-takers of the Earth.
The third component of our mission is to train, certify, and empower practitioners in shamanic capacities of healing wisdom, so they have an advanced skill set and supportive professional community, providing a socially legitimized way for them to practice their path and craft as healers, educators, and as visionary artists of the spirit.
All of these purposes are founded in a vision of showing people how to find and awaken, activate, and express or extend these capacities of the Shaman Within themselves in the world. You can envision process this as very similar to the way of Zen devotee, through various practices, progressively awakens and expresses the Buddha-nature in every aspect of life, while progressively reducing the obstacles to that.
The Crows Nest training programs work you experientially in Four Archetypal Dimensions of the Shaman Within: Visionary Capacities, Heart-path and individuation capacities, Wounded Healer work and capacities, and Ritual Leadership capacities. These archetypal dimensions are arranged symbolically on a medicine wheel, with you at the center working the four archetypal quadrants. This is a handy didactic device. But the real shamanic education is experiential and takes place in holotropic states of consciousness, those altered states that are directly related to deep self-exploration, consciousness expansion, healing, rites of passage, and transformation. Our events entail learning through shamanic journeying of all kinds, including individual, guided, and healing forms, ecstatic sacred breath, movement and dance work, training in soul recovery and extraction, and in shamanic counseling skills, all happening in a supportive community context.
Crows Nest International is also offering an adventure in the study of shamanic plant medicines in the Peruvian Amazon this July 18-August 2nd.
For more information about Crows Nest events and its programs and workshops, go to the website https://crowsnestshamanism.com/blog/workshops-by-mikkal/shamanic-practice-and-sacred-breathwork-series/