I’m on a real serious undertaking of self-care, on a much deeper spiritual level than I have yet tried. So I’m looking and listening and see where my spirit leads me, to teachers, concepts, and practices that instinctually feel right but aren’t necessarily easy or convenient.
To that end, I just came across the work of Mary Shutan, a shamanic teacher and author, who really speaks to the themes that I’m trying to unravel in my life at the moment: living fully as an introvert and a highly sensitive person, dealing with ancestral traumas, relating with our non-human relatives (to borrow an indigenous phrase).
She wrote something recently on her Facebook Page that reframes our consumption habits and hopefully inspires us (even the wokest and most woowoo) to live more slowly and really align our shopping with our values. I wanted to share it with you.
Here’s what Mary said:
It is important on a spiritual and energetic level to understand where our tools and products come from. Who made or cultivated them, what sort of energy they have, what sort of connection they have to their craft.
A loving soul connection to what is being crafted means that that connection, that relationship, enlivens the tool, product, etc. Many practitioners speak, sing, or otherwise communicate to their plants, their tools, their cooking, jewelry and artwork, as they are being created to “speak them into being”. To help them not only to connect but to understand their purpose.
The herb, the tool, the piece of jewelry, is also a being in and of itself. Much like a child, neglect and abuse will cause for it to become devitalized, or even traumatized. Loving connection and passion will allow for it to thrive, to become what it was fully intended to be.
When someone is cultivating something (be it plant, tool, meal, artwork, book, etc) who they are is intertwined with it energetically. This can mean incredible things, a merging of two intelligences, creative capacity and soul finding its way into a world direly in need of beauty, connection, and soul.
It can also mean that someone who is energetically absent, emotionally chaotic, or who does not have a connection to what they are doing may not be the best person to purchase from. Those energies are intertwined with what you have bought from them.
Always look for passion, for regard, for education, for the soul present in spiritual crafts. You can tell when someone’s soul, their vitality, is present in something, be it meal, artwork, or drum, by your innate, intuitive, response to it. You can also read their bio, their methods of production, and these days, can see what energies they bring into the world (and surround them) via social media.
Plain text here (c) Mary Mueller Shutan.
Have you had the experience of buying something so soulful and meaningful that you can’t really articulate why you had to have it, and have it still?
Conversely, have you had the unpleasant experience of buying something so soulless and spiritually flat that it gives you the icks, to the point that you have given it away (or thrown it out)?