Monthly Archives: December 2015

In Utero Healing… and Connecting to Source

Date: December 22, 2015

Author: maryshutan

Categories: Mary's Services, raising your consciousness, Uncategorized

One of the largest unhealed sources of pain for people is the in utero experience.

If we were wanted, how we were treated, and how we came together energetically and spiritually while in utero determines a great deal of our thinking about ourselves and the world around us for the rest of our lives.

How we were born, what sort of love and support we felt, the physical nature of the birth experience will create our understandings of if this world is a place that we feel we are struggling to be a part of on a consistent basis, or if the world is something we move through with ease.

Any trauma that we experience in utero or in the birthing process makes a significant imprint on us.

Trauma during this time can be physical (did we get enough nutritionally, did we have enough space, and so forth), emotional (what were our mother’s thoughts/emotions about us being born, what were our father’s thoughts/emotions, what were our own?, how did the household as a whole react to the realization that we were there… or that we were going to be born?), energetic/spiritual (what energies did we come in with? what ancestral, past life, karmic energies and residue is already there? what is society like, what sort of world are we being born into at the time of our birth?)

I realize this is a large list, but there is even more to consider than these basic questions…

Our in utero and birth experience is not only a significant imprint, it is (arguably) the single most important imprint that we form.

Our first breath, in fact, teaches us about the basic energetics of the world. Was our first breath easy for us? Did we feel supported and loved in this time? Our first breath energetically sets the basis for our basic energetic nature throughout our lives as long as it remains unhealed.

This means that if we are gasping for air, we might have a basic energetic nature of feeling like life can never support us… as if we are continually drowning and grabbing on to anything around us to help us throughout life. If we freely breathe in our first breath but we are not in the vicinity of our mother or father, we may not feel supported or loved by life. If our first breath is in any way problematic, we may find ourselves being more of a “taker” in this world, or in competition with others, because our first imprint of the physical world (our first breath) was that we needed to fight for our place in this world.

As we are developing in utero a variety of energies come together to create us.

We are a grouping of energies, and we come together for the purposes of this lifetime. In utero is the time that we come together spiritually, when our basic spiritual grids are formed that determine everything from our physical nature to our emotions to many of our beliefs. While many of these energies may come from different sources (energies from karmic, past lives, family, ancestral) while these energies are coming together we are also drastically influenced by the container we are formed in (the in utero experience).

So in utero we are a formation of energy, carrying over varying imprints from other sources, and they are creating our own blueprint for the purposes of our individual lifetime. But the emotions, energies, beliefs, and circumstances of the time in utero (especially coming from the mother, but the father as well is a part of this) can drastically change these blueprints.

The single most common belief that comes from having difficult or traumatizing in utero experiences is the belief that we are not intended to be here… or that the Earth doesn’t support us. A very similar belief coming from this time is the belief that we need to do everything ourselves, or that nobody loves, likes, or supports us.

We may also feel like the world, or the people in it, are out to get us, dislike us, or that we are somehow separate from the Earth or society. Other common issues stemming from this time are consciously wanting to die (latent or not-so-latent death wish), a background of latent emotion that doesn’t seem to come from anywhere (this can be ancestral or from other sources as well, but can be from this, such as constantly being filled with rage or grief for no reason), significant self esteem and self-worth issues, self-destructive tendencies (yes, I include addiction with this, although it can be a lot of different behaviors), and overwhelming emotions that arise when the subjects of birth, in utero experiences, while having a child yourself, or conscious knowledge of trauma during the in utero experience or birthing process.

This is not a comprehensive list, but as you can see, a lot of people have large unhealed energies from the in utero experience. Just because you have one “symptom” doesn’t mean you have an unhealed in utero experience, by the way, but as many people do, it is a safe bet to assume that something could be healed there for most people.

One of the biggest reasons why many people take so much in this world is because they were not given the nurturing and support they needed, the healing they needed in utero.

Again, this is one of the biggest reasons we constantly feel in competition with others, and feel as if the world is not a safe place to be. Interestingly, I have worked with many people who really have felt like (and actually are) from “someplace else” (keeping things general) and while they very well might be, or are, the more significant piece of healing beyond healing the origin story is always the in utero experience.

If we feel we were wanted, loved, and supported in utero we will feel wanted, supported, and loved by the world.

But while we cannot have conscious recall (well, most of us) of the in utero circumstances in order to heal this, we can heal this through spiritual work. We can retrace our steps and heal everyone involved until we have a good birth– the birth we wanted. We can consciously decide to incarnate, to be here, and to connect again to ourselves, to the people around us, and to the Earth itself.

And I will likely write another blog about this, but we can go back and go through our births and heal them. There is such a thing as a good birth, and a good death, and proper spiritual work can heal both of those things.

We can go all the way back until we are able to remember our initial separation from Source, our being birthed from oneness into individuality. This is often a profound process for people to work through, as there is often a great deal of grief, rage, and misunderstanding of being separated from Source. Healing our separation from source can have a profound impact on our lives, if we are ready and willing to go there.

We can truly begin to feel loved and wanted by the Earth, despite whatever our actual circumstances were. While we cannot change the physicality of things (lack of nourishment, for example) we can dramatically have an impact on the imprints we have developed, and clear the emotions, beliefs, and imbalanced grids that developed during this crucial time.

We can have a first breath that allows for life to fill our lungs, and to feel totally sustained by this world.

If you would like to work with me, you can contact me. I work via Skype/phone worldwide, and require people to write me a bit about why they would like an appointment with me so I can make certain that I can help them. You can find out more information about my ethics and practices here, and contact me here.

Emotional Blackmail and the Victim Archetype

Date: December 17, 2015

Author: maryshutan

Categories: raising your consciousness

So although this isn’t the cuddliest thing to talk about, this time of year tends to bring out some of the more difficult patterns (especially interpersonally) with people. We are interacting with people (i.e. family and some friends) that we don’t normally, and so we have to deal with some issues… and people… that we may be able to steer clear of the rest of the year.

But no matter what time of year it is, an understanding of how certain people relate to the world can be really important. But why is this important? You may be asking this, especially as we begin to talk about people who are difficult, miserable, or emotionally blackmail and manipulate others.

Because if we can understand people and what they are looking for, we can stop reacting to them. We can maintain our boundaries with them. We can be confronted with the worst type of person and not give them the satisfaction of the reaction that they want.

But more on that later…

I have written a bit about the Victim Triangle (or the Drama Triangle as some call it) here. I have found this construct helpful in understanding people, specifically those who present themselves as a victim. But you can read about that in the linked blog.

When talking about the “Victim” it is important to realize that I have compassion for this type of person, as should you. We all go through struggle in our lives, and some of us have been victimized again and again in this world.

But we all have a personal choice. We can remain the victim, look out at the world as a victim, and remain broken and victimized… or we can look at our struggles as a source of strength. We can realize that however horrific something was that we survived it, and take on the archetype of “warrior”, “survivor”, or “hero” instead. And we can do this even if we are still struggling to heal, even if we still feel broken or victimized or hurt… even if we are struggling to forgive.

The Victim emotionally blackmails others to get what they want.

This is a bold statement I realize, but we all, unless we have really and truly worked on ourselves, respond emotionally to people (and even then, we still can and do). We like to think ourselves as creatures of logic, but we are not. We are emotional creatures.

The Victim Archetype has realized this.

They will tell their story in hopes of sympathy, in hopes of support. This is all well and good– we all need support, we all need help.

But their agenda is not to receive that sympathy or support. In fact, many who hold onto the Victim archetype will actively refuse much needed help or support and see an agenda behind it. They are unable to see (or perhaps were never able to see) the world as a supportive place, and may believe that the world and all of the people in it are out to continually victimize them.

The Victim Archetype will actively tell their story so they can emotionally blackmail others.. so they can get the response they want and need.

So the real question is what do they want and need? They may need help, they may want help, and some are willing to rise above the victim archetype and into the warrior or hero archetype, and those people are seeking help to heal or to be in community.

But others who do this are so stuck on being the Victim that they really are looking for people to either enable them, which means that they will continue to be a Victim but just with more energy (your energy, in fact… and likely your time, emotions, and the sort of drama that come from people like this creating havoc in your life)… or to become a perpetrator to them, consolidating their view that the world and the people in it are continually persecuting them and victimizing them.

They do this by emotional blackmail, by continually telling their story and wanting a reaction based off of it. It is beautiful when a survivor tells their story. It is emotional blackmail when someone tells their story or talks about their lives for the express purpose of either taking energy from you (provoking an emotional reaction) or to get you to do something for them. It is also typical that this is incredibly one-sided, as the eternal Victim has nothing to give, and will attach to others to drain them of their energy…

And energetically and spiritually how and when we have the most energy is when we are having an emotional reaction to something. Magical and spiritual practitioners for millennia have known the power of emotions and what sort of energy they generate. Although many do not know this consciously, “trolls” on the internet, friends, family, and the Victim archetype all provoke emotional reactions in order to deplete others of energy.

So hopefully many of the Victims of this world will rise up, will see the strength and power of being a survivor, a hero, and become a light to others. Hopefully they will realize that their beliefs are coloring their world, and the world can be a place that can nurture and support them. Hopefully they can heal, and fill that emptiness inside that has them reaching out again and again, provoking and emotionally blackmailing others to fill that black hole within themselves… and instead fill it with their own power. I have hope that many can, and I have seen others through this process many times… and it is always beautiful to witness someone realizing their own strength and resiliency, to witness someone heal after something traumatic (or many things traumatic).

But it is not our responsibility to change the Victim. They have to want to, and they have to be ready to do so. And some (or many) will not do so, because it is difficult, or they are too broken to, or just are not yet ready to.

So what can we do when faced with the Victim? We can realize what they are doing. We can realize the emotional manipulation, the blackmail. We can see them for who they truly are. People who are healed and whole do not need to fill up on the energy of other people, and they do not need to manipulate others.

Feel sad for the person that they need to be this way in the world, and how hard that must be for them. How hard it must be to think that everyone and everything is victimizing you, and the only way you can make your way in this world is by emotionally blackmailing others.

It is such a hard existence to think this way and to act this way. These people are lonely, desperate, and reactionary… lashing out at anyone and anything that they perceive is persecuting them.

Once you realize who they are, and what they are doing, name it in your mind: “Oh, this person is the perpetual Victim archetype, and they are emotionally blackmailing me to get me to do something for them or to cause a reaction”.

Although this seems simple, this is often enough to maintain and realize boundaries. Once you realize someone is like this, you stop emotionally reacting to them. You stop giving them what they need, what they are trying to feed on, and you will stop enabling them. And when you do this, they will at first get angry and treat you as a persecutor (especially if you have enabled them in the past). But if you realize who they are continually, you stop reacting to them. You stop giving them your energy (and likely your time, and so forth).

The Victim then has two choices– they can either find someone new… or they can interact with you in a new way. Most will choose to find someone new rather than interact with you in a new way. Their patterns are too ingrained, and they are not ready or do not wish to heal.

But you are then free. Free to interact with them without this cycle occurring, free to not interact with them if you do not need to… conscious and free to be who you are, with boundaries, and to not let anyone manipulate you into doing something emotionally, physically, or energetically, that goes against your nature.

Spiritual Advice Column: What are Twin Flames?

Date: December 11, 2015

Author: maryshutan

Categories: Uncategorized

Hi Mary,

I hear some energy workers talk about twin flames or twin souls. They often seem to be referring to different things. What is a twin flame/twin soul, or is it even real?

Thanks for any insight. I’m just curious.

– K

Hi K:

So I have a few thoughts about this. I believe the basic idea for the concept of twin souls is that they are people who are on the same trajectory in this incarnation, meaning that they have similar lessons to learn, a strikingly similar path to follow, etc. There is no real romantic thought in this, it is just someone that has similar energy as you, similar path, and likely comes from the same soul group (more on that later).

Twin flames are a bit different. The thought there, as it seems, is that these are people that are destined or meant to meet and the end result is that each person is completed… They are considered the “other half of our soul” and kind of go into that sort of cheesy territory of “you complete me”.

Some people use these terms interchangeably, but those are my basic thoughts on the differences.

So are they real? This is an interesting question…

In my experience the people who really want to believe in this sort of stuff tend to do so from a really unhealed place. They meet someone they feel passionate about, announce that they are their “twin soul” or “twin flame” and typically a lot of drama occurs.

When you consider the criteria of what a “twin flame” is it is all stuff that we hear and feel when we are really passionate about the relationship we are in, typically in the beginning stages of the relationship. We instantly feel a deep connection to the person, we have great sex, we in fact may feel completed by the person.

But this is all stuff that we should be doing for ourselves. None of us has a “missing” aspect of ourselves. We are all healed, we are all whole. We are not puzzle pieces looking for the other pieces to make us into something we would not be able to become on our own.

I have noticed, on the whole (yes, I will probably get flak for this) that people who go into relationships with this sort of “twin flame” approach have dramatic, chaotic, and unhealed relationships. Basically, they have a lot of fire in the relationship, a lot of illusion, and then it fizzles out, often in an equally dramatic way.

When you are in a healed relationship, a healthy relationship, you do not need someone else to complete you. You appreciate the person for who they are, and they appreciate you for who you are. You may have differences, arguments, and so forth (as can be expected in any relationship) but the basis of the relationship is not steeped in illusion, in chaos, or in the sort of sophomoric Romeo and Juliet type illusory drama that people in the “twin flames” camp tend to perpetuate and live out.

Rather than this being something to evolve someone into a higher vibration (or whatever the belief/verbiage is that surrounds the various “twin flame” illusions) frequently I see that these relationships are acting out past karmic ties, and often are not doing so in a way that supports releasing those ties, or healing that aspect of their karma with the other person.

Rather than being something that “enlightens” one another, the “twin flame” phenomena often simply supports repeating loops of karma, past instances of meeting in other lifetimes and the acting out of chaos and drama from that lifetime. What is funny (or not so funny) about this is that people create this huge illusion about how they are becoming enlightened, or whole, or vibrating at a higher capacity (or insert new-age-ism here) but really they are just creating a lot of chaos and illusion out of something that could simply be healed and peaceful.

So I always ask people who are in any sort of relationship:

Does this person support you? By this I mean do they accept you for who you are
Does this person make you feel more healthy, or want to be more healthy?
When you are around this person, is it typically peaceful or is there drama and chaos?
Is your relationship in a state of balance? Meaning that most of the time your relationship has balance, as well as both of you individually have balance
Do you give as much as you receive in your relationship?
Without this person, are you whole?

Largely the above answers should be “yes” for any type of relationship, and if they are not, there is something to heal. Again, we all should be striving to be whole, and do not need anything other than ourselves to be whole… it is an inside job to become whole. While there are certainly people along the way that can help us (or teach us lessons) to become whole, and in fact the whole universe resides within us, we become whole by becoming balanced ourselves.

When we become balanced ourselves we no longer need illusion, we no longer need someone to “complete us” and we no longer need the sort of drama and chaos that relationships like this tend to perpetuate.

So although I realize that may sound a bit harsh to people, I am someone who believes in love, in having a romantic companion or partner, in having those around you who can love and support you… who can help you when you are going through times of being not healthy, balanced, or whole. We all need people in our lives to help us, to love us, and to be with us. We, in fact, have people that we have specifically incarnated with to help us heal, become whole, or to love us.

But part of this “twin flame” illusion is the fact that “there is just one.” Meaning that if you do not meet your twin flame (and I will put this not so delicately) you are screwed… meaning that there are so many people who just continually seek and seek looking for that perfect person to complete them, and they are never satisfied in their relationships because they have created this mental illusion of “the one” and the people they meet never live up to that… because they are real, living, breathing people with issues. Like we all have issues.

And if we continue to believe that there is just one perfect person out there for us, who we are fated to meet, we will never really be in our physical lives. Our messy, sometimes difficult, and very human lives and relationships. And if we do meet someone who we believe to be our “twin flame” they will also be human, and what will end up happening is that they will show their imperfections at some point in the relationship, and our illusions will come crashing down.

If we are able to achieve our own state of balance and wholeness, we just don’t need to create a bunch of illusory thoughts, illusory relationships, and no longer feel incomplete. And if we do, we know that we have something we need to heal.

So my thoughts on the idea of a “soul group” or “twin” or parallel souls is a bit different. I do very much believe in soul groups. I just do not believe that there is just one person out there to complete us romantically or in any other way.

So what is a Soul Group?

So the idea that we are all one is very much true. Of course there is a lot of illusion and philosophy that has been placed upon that oneness in our modern society, but that is another blog (which you can read here).

But we are also human. This is a difficult concept to explain, but essentially when we begin to “wake up” to oneness it may be to the sort of acid trip experience where we feel ourselves breathing with a mountain or something… but when we truly begin to wake up beyond ourselves and our own constructs (our histories, family system, ancestry, past lives… basically the outer constructs that create our belief systems) we begin to experience world constructs (societal, cultural, world, archetypal, etc).

But we also begin to awaken directly to the energy of “oneness”. This means that we begin to find and realize that there are people out there who are on a similar path to us. We see others and there is a recognition there that we are similar in some way. We walk parallel lives, have similar energies, interests, and so forth. We may be struggling with the same things at the same times in strikingly similar ways.

This isn’t a romantic thing, by the way, although that can be confused, and sometimes people from the same soul group will form romantic relationships that work, and work well.

This is a realization that as souls we tend to incarnate in groups, where a group of people (a soul group) who have likely known each other before in some other capacity incarnate at similar times as one another. Oddly, this looks like a big cloud to me… but I digress

So people from the same group may begin to meet, will resonate with one another immediately, and may even recognize that they have similar goals, understandings, and jobs to do on Earth as one another.

In an awakened state (or near to) one can sense the rest of the Soul Group that perhaps has not incarnated and communicate with them, or more likely, will be able to sense their Soul Group on Earth energetically (which is a weird thing to sense), or may begin to meet them or befriend others in their Soul Group.

So generally when you are able to meet others in your Soul Group there can be a recognition of you being “twins” because of similar path wanderings. But our Soul Group can be quite large, some people have a massive Soul Group, where other people incarnate with just a few others. But even the people who incarnate with a few others (and these tend to be people who awaken more in this lifetime and have more distinct jobs to do, typically) do not need others to be whole.

There is just a recognition that we come from oneness, and then we separate. Eventually we separate into groups. Some of these groups have incarnated quite a few times. Some of these groups are relatively “new”. Some of these groups have only a few members that are in physical bodies, some have all or most of the members of the group in physical bodies.

We are always part of a collective, a whole. But we can also be whole within ourselves. We can let go of the ideologies, the chaos, the illusions. When we let go of the titles, the wants, our psychological needs, we can simply ask the question of “does this idea bring more chaos into my life?” “does this relationship bring more chaos into my life?” because while everything is spiritual, not everything is healed. And healed means whole, and peaceful.

If you would like to submit a question for my spiritual advice column, you can contact me here. Please note, I do not answer all questions, and am not an allopathic physician (meaning go to your doctor if you are concerned about something, and take my opinions/thoughts with the proverbial grain of salt).

Spiritual Doors

Date: December 8, 2015

Author: maryshutan

Categories: Uncategorized

There is a far-off look to the magicians eyes… a look that can be seen in many who have delved far and wide and deep on a spiritual path.

It is a look of having seen a lot… too much perhaps to be able to be a part of polite society, too much and too deep and too far that it separates you from most of humankind.

It is a wild look, one of being completely present yet at the same time in some far-off place.

Most of us will not have this look, it is a rare breed that goes to the depths of the Soul, of their Soul… and the type of knowledge and understandings that come from entering a place like this are for the rare individual, the called individual… and these types will be the first to tell you that there is a certain depth you can go to that may, perhaps, be too deep.

But many of us on our spiritual path will have come across spiritual doors.

What is a spiritual door you may ask? It is a concept, and occasionally a reality. It is the idea that we come across certain precipices on our spiritual path, certain thresholds. And at that precipice is a spiritual door.

For some of us it is a choice to walk through that spiritual door. For others we may be shoved in.

The concept of the spiritual door at first glance is seemingly simple. It is a threshold, and if we step through that door our understanding of ourselves and the world will change. We may have a new perspective, let go of old emotions and understandings. We may also gain new abilities or skills.

The difficulty of a spiritual door is that once gone through you can never go back. Although this is a sort of dire statement to make, it is true. Once you go through a spiritual door your understandings and perhaps your capabilities in this world will change. This means that even if you were to go back to your old life, who you were before this sort of mini-death, you would still have the knowledge, understandings, and capabilities that were granted to you by your passage through this threshold.

At first our spiritual doors are frequently about ourselves going beyond our own limitations. The only person stopping us from proceeding is ourselves– our own beliefs, what we know to be true of the world, what we know to be true of ourselves. We must surrender to deepening– to going beyond what we know to deepen our experience of this world and understandings of ourselves… what we hold to be true must change.

Many of us wait at the precipice of this spiritual door, uncertain of if we should go through… understanding that if we do enter, our lives will change. And we may know we need to change, we may really want to deepen our spiritual path, to heal, or to move forward in our lives. But there is a battle– between what is know, what is comfortable and fear, the unknown.

If we are to surrender, to let go of our fear, we can move beyond our personal barriers and into our own deeper spiritual truths.

But the spiritual door is more than a concept. It certainly is always a personal initation, a sort of test to see if we can proceed, if we are willing to.

But in the spiritual realms there are actual doors that we can pass through. It is more than a metaphor, it is the entry into a spiritual realm, a universe, a going beyond the depths of our own personal demons and fears and into the collective.

For these doors there may be guardians. There may be tests. We may be required to prove our worth before entry.

It is a strange concept, because in the modern-day spiritual concept of the Universe we can interact with anything supposedly. If we want to interact with Zeus, or an elf or a parallel universe we are told we just need the correct technique, or series of techniques.

I make a big fuss about self-created vs. actual spiritual realms because there is more than ourselves out there. If we consider ourselves on a shamanic path or any sort of spiritual path it goes beyond psychology and self-creation. If we are at the point of depth in our spiritual path where we are interacting with more than our own disassociated aspects of self, we will find spiritual doors. These will allow for us to go deeper into understanding what can be considered truth. Of not only our own personal truth but the energies that make up the Universe, the cosmos, the world…

And seeing these depths is not granted simply because we may feel entitled to them. We must pass through a spiritual door to do so. A door that is not guarded by a fragment of our own psyche, but of an actual spirit or being.

In many cases it is our choice to go through these types of spiritual doors, to take part in the initiation process, the testing and proving of worth that we are ready to know more than we do now. There are specific ceremonies throughout history in varying spiritual traditions that have allowed for people passage through these precipices.

In many cases we may not realize that we are at this precipice, and be uncertain of what we need to do to walk through this door. We also may be resisting, or warring within ourselves about whether we wish to deepen our experiences of ourselves or this world.

Walking through these spiritual doors often does not set us free, and this expanded perspective of our own truth or spiritual truth(s)… this deepening… can be a burden, resulting in isolation or simply being an outlier in a society that does not accept or understand those who have had spiritual experiences that go beyond a certain point.

But whether it is a spiritual door of our own creation– our own restrictions and beliefs not allowing for us to gain greater access to who we truly are– or if it is an external spiritual door granting us access to another realm or greater spiritual truth– the effect is always the same.

We understand, we know, we realize more than we did. And this can radically change our lives, it can radically deepen our experiences of this world. But it can also be a burden. Choose thoughtfully and carefully how far you wish to go on your path. There are depths and doors that once entered cannot be gone back from.