Healing Wisdom for a Wounded World: My Life-Changing Journey Through a Shamanic School (Book 3)

By Weam Namou

In Book 3 of Healing Wisdom for a Wounded World, Weam Namou shares the highlights of the third year of her apprenticeship in Lynn Andrews’ four-year shamanic school.

Her biggest act of power this year is to make it to Storm Eagle, the training gathering in Arizona, and participate in the marriage ceremony. She wants to finally meet her mentors and Lynn Andrews in person. As she sets her intent and waits for the outcome, she dives into the schoolwork, which focuses on balancing one’s emotions, building endurance, working deeply with the chakra systems, and celebrating the marriage of self to self.

Through the author’s journey, you will gain insight into these ancient holographic teachings where the past, present, and future exist simultaneously as our reality. This is a theory which goes back to the indigenous people who believed that we exist in a dream or illusion. Physicists across the world are now thinking the same thing and people are awakening to the possible idea of birthing a new story for our planet.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Weam Namou
• Release date: Sep 19, 2016
• ISBN: 9781945371950

Weam Namou

Born in Baghdad, Iraq as a minority Christian, Weam Namou came to American at age ten. She is an award-winning author of eight books - three novels, one poetry book, and the Iraqi Americans Book Series. Her recent memoir series about her experience with Lynn Andrews' 4-year shamanism school reveals how the school's ancient teachings helped her heal old wounds and manifest her dreams. Namou received her Bachelor's Degree in Communications from Wayne State University. She studied fiction and memoir through various correspondence courses, poetry in Prague and screenwriting at MPI (Motion Picture Institute of Michigan). Her essays, articles and poetry have appeared in national and international publications. As the co-founder and president of IAA (Iraqi Artists Association), Namou has given poetry readings, lectures and workshops at numerous cultural and educational institutions. In 2012, she won a lifetime achievement award from E'Rootha. Her rich Babylonian heritage, her educational background, her apprenticeships with spiritual masters, and her travels around the world have helped her make connections with people from different walks of life - Spanish, Italian, Greek, French, British, Portuguese, Czechs, Israeli, Mexican, Moroccan, Tunisian, Jordanian... the list goes on. Namou hopes to pass on her cultural and spiritual teachings to her readers.

Book preview

Healing Wisdom for a Wounded World

My Life-Changing Journey Through a Shamanic School

Book 3

WEAM NAMOU

HERMiZ

PUBLiSHING

Copyright © 2016 by Weam Namou

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission from the author.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

2016914733

Namou, Weam

ISBN 978-1-945371-95-0

Healing Wisdom for a Wounded World

My Life-Changing Journey Through a Shamanic School

Book 3

(memoir)

First Edition

Published in the United States of America by:

Hermiz Publishing, Inc.

Sterling Heights, MI

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Table of Contents

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Chapter 1: Lodge of the Marriage Basket

Chapter 2: Date Night

Chapter 3: Listen, Don’t Talk

Chapter 4: Different Passages

Chapter 5: Power is Earned

Chapter 6: A Big Job

Chapter 7: Do Not Cast Me Off in Old Age

Chapter 8: Spirit Mate

Chapter 9: Myrtle Beach

Chapter 10: Back to Reality

Chapter 11: A New Dweller

Chapter 12: Money is Energy

Chapter 13: Enjoy Your Life

Chapter 14: You’re Not God

Chapter 15: Being Heard in the World

Chapter 16: Sorcery

Chapter 17: A Conversation With the Red Indian

Chapter 18: Learning the Lesson, Finally

Chapter 19: Storm Eagle

Chapter 20: Seekers and Healers

Chapter 21: Marriage Ceremony

Chapter 22: A Fountain of Creativity

Other books by Weam Namou

About the Author

For my parents, who brought me to this country to experience freedom.

Chapter 1

Lodge of the Marriage Basket

The third year of Lynn Andrews’ shamanic school started with additional mystery. None of us knew who our mentor would be. Rumor had it that there was a shortage of mentors. Some heard through the grapevine that those who hadn’t yet been contacted by a mentor were going to have Janet, or was it Janice? It was Janet. She wasn’t into social media, so we could not find her on Facebook. A few women said they’d seen her at a couple of Lynn’s gatherings. They described her as a Nurturing Mother Energy who was a very nice and quiet woman and somewhere in her eighties.

Overwhelmed with curiosity, the apprentices reunited after their winter hibernation and created a private Facebook page where they analyzed the mentor situation and other strange occurrences, of which I will not go into great details. As I watched the dialogue on my computer screen, my spirit began to travel to other nearby places, closer to a place of light, peace, love, and understanding. I stared through the office window at the heavy snow buildup on the evergreen shrubs. The intensity of passion and longing for what I was about to learn was so strong that it could have melted the accumulated snow and created a small pond. I was happy. The work had begun.

The school material arrived on a Sunday while I was at church. The next day, I dropped my son off at preschool and headed to Panera Bread. Sitting next to the window, I observed the tall evergreens that stood in a row. There were six of them, the number of my sisters plus my mom, surrounded by snow. Michigan had had a rough winter with snow storms and below zero temperatures. The kids enjoyed the abundance of school closings and so did I. There was a calmer rhythm in the house when we did not go our separate ways in the morning and get back together late afternoon. No rushing to drop this one off to school and pick up the other one. We could cuddle, have story time, play games, cook or take naps anytime we wanted to, and no one was too cranky or tired for me to give them a chore or two. By Valentine’s Day the volume in the house had, once again, reached a high level, and I desperately needed to lower it. It was too much mommy this and mommy that. The whining and crying grabbed at me and dragged my energy along as if I was their security blanket. The harsh winter had kept us indoors so tightly that now it felt like we were stuck in a jar. We all wanted to open the lid and fly out.

Good morning. How are you? asked the usually happy cashier as she passed my table.

Good morning, I said, pulling my long hair over one side of my shoulder.

The coffee tasted good, but the French toast bagel with chives and onion cream cheese was awful. They were out of Asiago cheese bagel, my favorite. It didn’t matter. The school’s third year, called Lodge of the Marriage Basket, had begun, and the first quarter study guide had opened my heart to the memory of these ancient teachings that were full of love, power, and spirituality. I read about the type of integrity an apprentice had to have in order to attain power. She had to maintain intensity and a total commitment to the path, make a place inside of her for whatever it is that she is learning, be conscious of her own harmonic and never allow that harmonic to drop below its normal place for very long, avoid living in her negativity and her pain, give away her pride if it develops from a stance of ego, and share her goodness and her joy.

This year we would look at our emotions, which live in the west side of the Sacred Wheel, the power that these emotions carry, and how they affect our point of view. We had to write a gratitude list each day and remember two truths as we worked through our assignments: will and intent wipe away fear; cowardice is the enemy of mastery. There was a lot of other information that included the marriage of the spirit and balancing the feminine and masculine energies. All this information transported me to another world, and I did not return until 3 pm, exactly the time I had to pick up my son.

The rest of the week had the warm and tasty aroma of apple pie. I joined a church class Wednesday night called Starting Point and made it home after church just in time to listen to author and motivational speaker Lisa Nichol’s creative visualization online session. She did something that I had not been able to do for quite some time. She made me break through the walls and enter my dream. By the time the visualization was over, I was in tears and for the next couple of days, could not lower my energy enough so that I could focus on the here instead of the future. Every night, I went shopping online and chose the house of my dreams, photos of successful female authors and filmmakers whom I wanted to be, and vacation spots for my family.

A week later, on Sunday morning, I received an email from my mentor, Janet. She lived in Texas and was in the first class of LACSAT (Lynn Andrews Center for Sacred Arts and Training), during which time there were more than 100 students. She had been a mentor for a number of years, used to be a nurse, later became a teacher and then worked with WHO (World Health Organization) in Somalia and the Caribbean. Now retired, she gardened, volunteered at hospices, and practiced Watsu, which is a form of Shiatsu, in warm water.

I was excited to meet her and asked if we could chat the next day. That Sunday night, I worked on my first week’s assignment, happy that the first quarter had no writing projects, just painting activities. Aside from the Sacred Wheel that we were required to do every week, there was a task called the Treasure Map. Here, we painted the emotions that we’d experienced throughout the week in order to identify the treasure inside us.

My children and I gathered around the living room table, our supplies of paper, paint tubes, paint brushes, a few Q-tips, and a small cup of water at our disposal. I started with the Emotional Energy Painting and slipped my hand inside the pouch of many papers, chose one, and read it: Money. I was to paint whatever the word or phrase inspired or invoked in me.

As I stared at the word money, I turned quite serious and then lifted the brush. My issues with not making money were as deep and as endless as the deep blue sea, so I painted the sea. This issue caused a rage and sadness inside me which could not be contained, like the volcano with its lava, so I painted a volcano. My dream of making a good income from my work was as far as the sun and stars, so I painted a sun and stars.

I was in tears after I finished the painting; years of pain and disappointment, of waiting, of hopes and dreams and then nothing, again and again and again and again. I saw what could have been, the lack of support, the ridicule. After returning the word to the pouch, I asked God to make this issue disappear.

The children went into their rooms after they completed their paintings and that was when I had a meltdown, sobbing like there was no tomorrow. I cleared up the paint supplies, wiped the table, and tore up and threw out my son’s painting. He returned a little later, looked around and asked, Mom, where’s my painting?

Oh shit! I thought, and I faltered and fumbled until I found a temporary lie. I hid it for Babba to see.

He continued looking around with a suspicious smile, acting polite so as not to hurt my feelings while his eyes interrogated me.

The next day, Monday, I was scheduled to talk with Janet at 8 pm. It was the start of Ba’ootha D’Ninwayeh, a three-day fast usually in February to commemorate Prophet Jonah’s deliverance of the Ninevites. My husband and daughter were both fasting, as was the rest of the Christian-Iraqi community. I cussed beneath my breath, since I’d already cooked chicken and potatoes for dinner. When I went to cook red rice, I ended up burning it even though I was standing right there over the pot and smelled rice burning. I cussed some more, then took my daughter to Kmart to buy Valentine’s cards. A woman shopper with three kids stole my shopping cart. I cussed some more, then went to Jerry’s Produce Market. At home, I realized I had forgotten to buy jalapeno peppers. Cuss, cuss, cuss was all I did until it was time to call Janet.

You’re very prompt, she said.

I had waited until 8:02 pm so as not to look too anxious. Yes, I am…well, usually I am when it comes to the school.

The house felt chaotic, which seemed to be the pattern the day I was to meet my mentors. I felt a sense of déjà vu that reminded me of what Bill Murray went through in Groundhog Day, when he was trapped in a time loop that wouldn’t break until he learned a lesson or two. My four-year-old son ran in and out of the kitchen yelling. His yells resonated into the living room, where I sat with the phone in my ear. My husband told him to be quiet because Mommy is on the phone. But my husband’s voice was so loud that it made it even harder for me to hear. I apologized to Janet about all the noise, and she laughed and said, That’s all right. I don’t mind. I figured it must be a cat or a child.

I moved into the bedroom, closed the door, and told Janet about my experience with the first and second school year. In 2011, one of Lynn’s books, Writing Spirit, caught my attention. I was in a really bad place with my writing career and half the time wished that God would change this godforsaken calling. Then the words in Writing Spirit rejuvenated my love for my work and caused me to schedule a session with Lynn for literary advice. I’d never imagined that that session would lead to enrollment in a four-year shamanic school.

In the first year of the school, called Lodge of the Winds, we learned about the two different mother energies. Finding out that I was Rainbow Mother Energy liberated me. Lynn describes Rainbow Mother as the energy of the poet, the dancer, the weaver, and the seer. She is completely misunderstood in our society, a world that does not support its artists, its writers, and thinkers. Rainbow Mother is usu­ally seen as a misfit, a person on the fringes. They often live in chaos because they are always in the dream state. When they don’t live fully as their beautiful Rainbow selves, they become Crazy Woman, or a woman so frustrated that she perhaps turns to substance abuse for comfort.

The other energy is the Great Nurturing Mother Energy. Lynn describes a nurturing mother as someone who loves routine, gets married, raises her children, and is a pillar of society. Yet women who nurture also have controlling tendencies and, when they reach midlife and their children leave the nest, their opposite energy, Death Mother, appears.

Knowing my mother energy that first year helped improve my relationship with myself, my husband, and my children, I told Janet. In the second year, I regained my literary voice and was also able to finish writing my book.

Janet laughed, an easy laugh which made the conversation light and fun. I noticed a lack of interest on my part to say anything else regarding my career. It was apparent that I now had a newer truth for my life story, a lovely truth which I planned to honor and listen to from now on.

Since the end of last year, some people have asked me if I could help them with their healings, I said. But I don’t know if that’s my job or not, or if I’m even equipped to heal or not. At the same time, I don’t want to turn them down, not if I can help.

Just wait until you graduate and see. Right now, you’re a student. You’re an apprentice. People will seek you out because of the school, and my advice is to tell them, ‘I’m a student.’

I guess because my great-great grandmother was a healer, I am tempted to do that type of work.

What happens if you work with someone and they don’t get healed?

I know, I said nervously. That idea had crossed my mind.

The school is really about healing yourself. You just look out for yourself, my dear. Just be cool about it. There’s no rush. There’s no rush at all.

Her calmness gave me the sensation of someone breathing balm on my head and heart.

From what you’ve told me so far, you worry and fuss a lot, she said.

Oh, my mom is like that!

Well, you’re not your mom.

She surprised me. In the past two years, there had been so much emphasis on me having acquired my mother’s inner qualities that I was ready to cut the cord from her and move on.

My guess is that it’s your culture, she said. "You’re following the footsteps of your mother. She’s probably doing it because her mom did it. Once you acquire a belief in yourself, which is what this