About
Within a single life, we often live many.
The moments where one life ends and another begins tend to define us.
This work begins in those moments — when something breaks open
when what once held no longer does
and when we are brought into contact with something deeper than we know how to name.
Engaging the Abyss of our own transformation is beautiful, daunting work.
We think we are on one path
so we study all the foliage, learn an enjoyment
dedicate our life, our identity...
but then the path abruptly ends
or splits in two, or twenty
all fathomless choices
and we wonder…
Which is right?
Which is mine?
Which is sane?
Can I say, All of them?
What if we replied yes...
But you still have to choose.
At the junction
I began my career as a naval officer and engineer, working in integrated systems. I chose that path out of a desire to see the world, and understand how it is built. I wanted direct experience.
From the outside, it was successful. From the inside, something was increasingly off. A sense of misalignment grew slowly, then insistently — not dramatic at first, but undeniable over time.
After 18 years, I left.
That decision did not resolve anything. It initiated something.
What followed was not clarity, but a long period of uncertainty, instability, and descent into what I can only describe as complete and utter mystery I thought I had no right to touch. But it would not leave me be. If I had understood the scale of it at the beginning, I may not have stepped forward.
But that is often how this work begins—with the will to trust the step.
From The Forest
Entering Disquiet ✦ Personal/Impersonal
When I found the nerve to leave my career, I was feigning peace at best. The substance of my crisis, long-sustained beneath the surface, and more recently bubbling up as courage to leave, was hardly what I was taking it as. And with the decision done and my pushing towards the exit, crisis was roiling forwards, cast in fearsome shapes I had no competence in identifying.
I was scared, and denying it...
Hi, I'm Brekke.
I arrived here out of a desire to see the world, and understand how it is built.
And of course, direct experience.
My journey through shamanism has completely shattered my understanding of all of it.
And then built it back up.
My own passage most certainly continues, but I have made it to enough shores (or down enough alleyways!) I can offer my hand.
My Practice
I hold immense gratitude for all of my many teachers, human and spirit. It has become evident to me that my lineages are many—I will be forever getting a handle on them. But it seems I was not an engineer in integrated systems for nothing... I still am!
Core shamanism, as developed by Michael Harner, steadies my keel in this work. I am a current resident of the Foundation for Shamanic Studies’ Three Year Program of Advanced Initiations in Shamanism and Shamanic Healing. Itself created from commonalities found in shamanic practice around the globe, core shamanism emphasizes how we all have access to the compassionate power and knowledge of the spirits, if we so choose.
What is at stake
Spiritual traditions abound about how to live harmoniously. But when outer shape assumes the place of inner content, something vital steps aside.
We have to know how to be ourselves.
We have to know and trust the inner teacher.
The outer world is not built to foster this inner relationship, and it never will be. It can provoke its necessity, to be sure, but there is certain work we can only do ourself.
Learning to see and hear is one of them.
This does not mean we are on our own. And truly, we never are.
There is living intelligence inside the sub-strata of experience—the forces moving through thought, feeling, environment, and relationship.
It is the norm in our world for these subsurface forces to unconsciously drive us.
We build awareness of these forces by consciously participating with them on the levels they operate.
Conscious participation on these levels requires we be ourselves—requires we know and trust the inner teacher.
This does not mean we are on our own.
Sovereignty and willpower form not-so-subtle undertones to how I present my practice. There is reason for this. Early on in my shamanic training, my teacher said something I have never forgotten: that some people simply do not have the willpower to hold on to the healings they receive, and there is nothing as practitioners that we can do about it. And in the sense that she was speaking, she is completely right. We all have free will, and shamanism and freedom are not the same topic.
Except in another sense they also are. Freedom exists in spirit. When we feel it to be unattainable, there is something blocked in our spirit we are choosing to hold on to. If we are unaware of this as our choice or our reasons for (still) making it, and we truly desire greater freedom than is our present experience, then chances are, our spirit and soul want our attention. They want us to become conscious of the mechanics of our choices, and the powers behind them, so our lives can become our own.
Spiritual sovereignty and spiritual discernment are very real and major issues. There are movements out there convincing the most ‘spiritual’ among us that free will does not exist. So I make it a topic as part of my personal creative liscence. Shamanism is the practice of working with spirit, and more specifically, the spirits. And not all spirits possess the same natures. Not all spirits are helping. Many have their own agendas. Sure, they will give us power, but are we conscious to the trade-offs and what we are giving them in return? Are we aware that we are already choosing such arrangements with spirits whether or not we think we have agreed to it?
In core shamanism, discernment of spirit is paramount to the program. We learn to work with the compassionate helping spirits who have transcended all agenda. They refuse to interfere with our independence of choice because they know that mastering this muscle for ourselves is how we learn to live.
This muscle, in fact, is the indwelling spirit of our hearts. Willpower demands courage. But it sincerely helps being sure it is our own Will we are fighting for.