Shaman Heart: Sacred Rebel

By Stephanie Urbina Jones and Jeremy Pajer

Never more than now has it been clearer: 

We are a world longing for initiation.

 

From fires to floods, droughts to disease,

• Language: English
• Publisher: Brave Healer Productions
• Release date: May 28, 2023
• ISBN: 9781954047792

Stephanie Urbina Jones

Stephanie Urbina Jones and Jeremy Pajer have spent over forty years in the combined pursuit of their personal freedom. Each of them studied, prayed, walked, talked, worked, and turned over stones in the road and in their hearts to heal and create a life of humility, passion and purpose. www.shamanheart.org.

Book preview

Introduction

A bit of advice given to a young Native American at the time of his initiation:

As you go the way of life, you will see a great chasm. Jump.

It is not as wide as you think.

~ Joseph Campbell

Never more than in recent human history has it been clearer that we are a world longing for initiation. From fires to floods, droughts to disease, from showdowns in schools to backyard barbecues with family feuds, drug addiction, and gangs to the ongoing wars of the world, our uninitiated longing is everywhere.

While fighting and defending our way of life and beliefs is a story as old as time, I believe that these great pains are the labor pains of our individual and collective soul longing to be initiated, to evolve, and be rebirthed into a new age and way of life.

This is the rebirth of humanity, and birth is messy. Rebirth, if we are lucky, comes in waves of sometimes painful opportunities to surrender, let go, and die to who we have been in order to be reborn into who we are called to be. If we’re able to pull back the lens of our lives and see from the bigger picture, it’s possible to see each pain, large or small, as a cry for love.

This cry is a call from the planet to the people and tribes of the world to be seen, heard, and consciously invited and initiated into the next stage of our existence, wholeness, and who we were born to be. Will we make it? Will humanity survive and thrive beyond this crisis? This is yet to be seen. As always, the truth remains that planetary revolution starts with a personal one. Are you ready and willing to surrender into and through the pain to the life of love calling you forward?

One of the major challenges in our modern-day world is that there are so many uninitiated people. In fact, most of us have gone through many powerful initiations already in our lifetimes, yet those experiences were not consciously recognized and integrated as the initiations they were that could have empowered and matured us. Instead, for many, the wounds of these experiences are still open as we act out personal and collective traumas and dramas in an unconscious effort to be seen, heard, and moved through.

Some of those experiences not commonly honored as initiations are: divorces, break-ups, relapses, deaths, job loss, major life illnesses, moving, etc. The problem is that when we don’t fully embrace these transitions and honor them as initiations, we may unconsciously sweep them under the rug or deny their impact on our lives.

In not fully honoring them as initiations, we disempower and abandon ourselves, often remaining emotionally stuck and regressed. Many times, when not making the wound or experience conscious and finding a way to ceremoniously honor the experience, we instead are left with an emptiness, and/or shame.

When we can fully feel, acknowledge, and embody what we went through and survived (claim it, name it, and own it), we can fully step into the power of the initiated. As ministers of the healing arts, it’s important for us to take responsibility for the parts of ourselves that have and have not been initiated, and in doing so, come to understand that it’s only by being initiated yourself that you can truly understand and initiate others.

You must be able to know the fear and have embodied the journey in order to best bring forth the power of an initiation with authority to the initiate. When you are willing and able to stand in your humble power, there is an undeniable reverence and resonance felt that builds trust and understanding that you’re worthy to safely guide and support the initiate through the initiation.

In doing so, we model how we can truly turn our wounds into our medicine. The 12-step model serves as a wonderful example of how the humbled, wounded warrior or addict can serve as a sponsor or sacred guide in service to another only after they have traveled through the journey, through the initiation, of the steps themselves.

One by one, we’re remembering and awakening. It’s important for us to understand that it takes us being initiated, becoming conscious and empowered through our own initiations, so we can then hold sacred witness for others in theirs. It’s vital to remember and realize that the initiate cannot be initiated by the uninitiated.

Gratefully, we’re in a time where the treasures of the past, ancient wisdom, and ceremony, are being re-membered, called forward, and used in a new way in our modern world to heal and transform those sacred wounds of our past.

As mentioned above, many of us have already traveled in our lifetime through potent and painful experiences that were initiations. What we did not know was how to honor, make conscious, and empower our experiences. If we’re able to go back to see, feel, and honor the experience, it can turn that pain into purpose and more wholeness. It’s through sacred rites of passage and initiation that we can turn those wounds into wisdom, grace, and into the medicine we all are longing for.

Just as life is calling us forward by reminding us of the wisdom of the ages, so too is every animal and living being in life sharing their wisdom through initiations of living, dying, and being reborn. No being would become who or what it is without each vital stage of development. Just like the butterfly, we too must go through each stage, from larvae to the hungry caterpillar to weaving a chrysalis, to surrendering into the mush, and finally emerging with new life.

Without any one of the stages or initiations, from larvae to the chrysalis to struggling to break through, the butterfly would die. The same is true for us, as a part of us dies each time we are not initiated and somehow welcomed into the next stage of life. If we’re not fully initiated in life through these sacred rites of time and space, we may have soul loss with a part of ourselves that remains regressed and unable to fully expand and integrate into the next stage or maturity of life.

We get stuck emotionally in our childhood wounds and replay this pain over and over again in every scene and relationship of our lives. Ultimately it’s a cry for love and our soul longing for us to come back and bring that younger part of ourselves home to integrate it into more wholeness. Because so many parts of us may be uninitiated in so many important times in our lives and not informed by bigger truths and deeper understandings, we settle and grasp for poor imitations.

Our sexuality, which is our creative life force, gets shut down, deprived, shamed, and hidden away in the closet. This can turn into sickness inside and out. Some of us feed our true hunger for intimacy and longing to be seen and known with various dysfunctional behaviors, disempowering our true essence.

The good news is that a large group of us are becoming more conscious and can see the bigger picture. We’re taking responsibility, and like the butterfly, while struggling, we’re on our way to emerging as new, more wise, humbled, and sovereign beings.

As shamanic beings and ministers, the more we become aware of the soul loss we have endured or initiations we have missed and then take the time to initiate those parts of ourselves, the more we can come home to our wholeness and sovereignty, living from the fullness of who we were born to be.

From this place of our more whole selves, we can intuitively hear the call, the cry for love from the world, or a person longing to be initiated in a part of their life. As is always the case, the more we heal and transform our wounds into our medicine, our pain into our purpose, the more we can minister to the moments and to those longing to be initiated into the next stage of their life.

It’s humbling to witness ourselves as wounded warriors with broken open, uninitiated hearts leading and living from our wounds, but we’re awakening from this dream of the planet and becoming more and more willing, because of our pain, to find a new way.

We see this trauma and drama play out on the stage of life again and again. For example: a young couple with true love and the intent of loving themselves and each other, creating a prosperous family life together but who inevitably get triggered and unconsciously regress back to live the wounds of their lineage with a childish adolescent response that triggers their beloved to inevitably abandon themselves and each other over and over again.

This vicious cycle plays itself out in personal relationships and on the world stage when one historical hurt is met with another. Thankfully, individually and collectively, through intentional initiations and sacred ceremony, we can honor what has been lost and lay our hearts on the altar time and time again. From this place, we can make amends, take conscious responsibility, and humbly step into a new stage or way of being.

Without this conscious evolution that our souls are crying for, we cannot become the evolved souls capable of creating and living the new dream of our planet. It’s only in remembering that all of life is sacred and moving with that consciousness and intent of love, that we can make it from this crisis to more whole, humble, and evolved human beings.

From the sacred initiation calling the unborn to life, to baby blessings, to celebrating our childhood innocence, to honoring the sacred rebel, sacred yes, shakti power of our adolescence to adulthood, initiating the maiden, mother, crowning and respecting our elders, and more—each of these sacred parts of ourselves is longing to be seen, heard, known, and welcomed home into our wholeness.

Can you imagine a world where we could access all these parts of ourselves, young to old, with our will and intent and draw consciously from the wisdom of each age? Can you imagine what it would be like if, when you were triggered, you had the personal power, consciousness, and awareness to minister to that younger part of yourself so you could more easily understand what the true need was and not project it out on another soul?

We believe that now more than ever, it’s vital to come to our own rescue, take responsibility, and recognize the wisdom in these rites of passage that more fully invite us, through ceremony and initiation, to consciously step into and through one experience of life to another.

All of life and humanity are called into this sacred journey of surrender. There is no way out but back in. Within our wounds is our medicine, our great compassion, empathy, and the way we turn our collective and individual pain into our purpose.

Currently, our planet and all its beings are in pain in some way or another. Can we give purpose to that pain? Can we take responsibility for our part in the healing of our planet by healing and initiating ourselves and others through this portal and rebirth in time? If the answer is yes, then you’re ready.

Excerpt From Freedom Folk and Soul Ministerial Training Manual written Stephanie Urbina Jones supported by Jeremy Pajer and Annie Mark

From Stephanie and Jeremy

A good friend and teacher of ours would say, "When things get hard or challenging, things are not happening to us but are happening for us."

Stephanie would say we repeat the same painful patterns in our lives as an unconscious longing to heal our wounds. Each of these moments can, and does, become an invitation to an initiation of transformation.

When these difficult things happen, and recurring triggers show up, there’s a part of us that doesn’t think we’ll make it through, and that’s what makes it an initiation.

We all make these transitions throughout life. If you’re reading this book, you desire to become whole, heal your wounds and patterns, and claim your sovereignty.

There is a sacred rebel inside all of us with an unrelenting desire for freedom and authenticity. For many of us, this shows up in our teenage years as we push against the rules and the limitations around us. It’s a natural longing for independence to discover who we are. Many of us acquiesce to the status quo or the ‘rules of life’ and unknowingly shut down the authentic parts of ourselves.

Some of us say fuck it and go against the grain. Often this happens in destructive ways. We hurt ourselves in a desperate need for our freedom.

Some of us can step out of the hamster wheel, find our authenticity, and own our truth and message to the world. In doing this, it may challenge those still attached to their well-grooved programming.

We learn to be what the life around us wants us to be in order to navigate and survive. At our core, we learn to hide who we are. We come by this honestly, as many of us grew up in traumatic environments or just simply in an environment where our fundamental needs were not met. Our sacred rebels will continue in different ways to push against all that is not our authentic soul selves until we push through and become who we are born to be.

Welcome to Shaman Heart: Sacred Rebel. May this book be an invitation to an initiation for transformation in your own life. We invite you to read each of these powerful stories and notice what speaks to you.

How has your longing for sovereignty shown up in your life?

When did you bravely go against the status quo?

Thankfully, history has given us many sacred rebels who have inspired and challenged us to be brave and stand in our truth. Nelson Mandela, Frida Kahlo, Martin Luther King Jr., Gloria Steinem, John Lennon, Mother Teresa, or simply the neighbor down the street standing up for what they believe in.

It is our hope you can find compassion and grace for yourself as you relate to each of these stories.

As you begin to gain an understanding of your sacred rebel, may you be inspired to courageously transform your wounds into wisdom, awaken to your divinity, own your power, and step into who you were born to be.

Make your rebellion sacred.

All our love,

Stephanie and Jeremy

Chapter 1

A Rose in the Wreckage

Burning Through the Darkness to Liberate Your Rebel Heart

Rev. Stephanie Urbina Jones, Co-Founder of Freedom Folk and SoulCEO of Stephanie Urbina Jones Entertainment

Lose your dreams and you might lose your mind.

~ Mick Jagger

My Story

It's hard to see the sun

When you’re face down in the hurt

When all your hopes and dreams

Are buried in the dirt

When you’re standing alone

Stranded in the dark

You find out just

How strong you really are

Sacred Rebel Rage Blood Red. It’s what Sherwin-Williams should have named the paint that was splattered all over the covered floor, my arms, and my favorite Texas rebel radio t-shirt.

I didn’t give a fuck. I was finally enraged, and the rage was coming out. I wanted to burn this house and the dreams it once held to the ground, but my lawyer encouraged me to keep it, saying, As an artist and woman, you will probably not be able to buy a house on your own.

I sold every piece of furniture that was ours, including and especially the $2000 bed we recently bought. I ate dinner on a blanket in the living room with my two-year-old daughter, watching SpongeBob SquarePants to keep my mind off of the pain erupting in me. I spent two weeks painting this room the first time, but it was too cherry red with a splash of pink.

I felt like vomiting and even angrier every time I walked into the room. The second two weeks, I painted it some kind of calming, almost romantic, Southwest- hot-orange-sunset. Fuck that; I will never be with another man again. I needed blood red that matched the rage, pain, longing, and crazy.

Only a few months earlier, I knew things weren’t right. As a child growing up in a sometimes volatile home, I was hyper-sensitive and developed a sixth sense for knowing shit was about to go down. All the signs were there; we had been fighting but trying for over a year when one morning, five words changed everything.

I don’t love you anymore.

It felt like something cracked from the crown of my head and kept shattering down through my heart as I slid to the ground.

No! No. No, I cried. Please don’t leave me. Please, can’t we make it work? I will do anything. Please don’t leave me. I love you. I don’t want to lose our family. I don’t want our baby to grow up like me in a broken home.

It was the same scene on repeat, a flashback to my dad leaving me when I was four years old. Just like then, I wailed like a baby, begged him, and came undone, but after 12 years together, my marriage was done.

What cracked within me on the kitchen floor that day was the ability for my mind to assemble and be okay. I was not okay. My pain broke me open, and I plunged down a tap root of despair, playing broken records of the past I thought I had transcended long ago.

I did what broken does. I tried to dull the pain, but it was too late. I was a walking wound haunted by feeling unworthy, unwanted, and filled with shame. I was a failure. Just like when I was a kid, I believed it was all my fault. I needed relief and fast.

I went with the tried and true ways of medicating: smoking, drinking, and crazy thinking, but nothing could touch the firestorm in my heart. All that wasn’t healed came up in a bonfire of regrets. I couldn’t sleep as I wrestled with the ‘what ifs’ while I scrambled for a lifeline.

Somewhere in the wee hours of the morning, I nodded off and then was awakened by a hope that broke through the dark clouds of grief.

Oh, I still have my music, my dream from when I was four, and the one my grandmother gave to me as she took her last breath.

It was as if a lightning bolt had shot through my heart.

Oh, thank God, that’s right, I have my daughter, my music, and my Fiery Angel album ready to come out.

I’d spent the last ten years on this dream and the mission my abuelita gave me to be a messenger of our Mexican culture.

I wrote and recorded the album for three years, raised half a million dollars, and started my own publishing company. I mortgaged our home, made three records before this one, had eleven partners in Texicana Entertainment, became the first independent female in Texas to go number one for five weeks in a row, and sang with my hero, Willie Nelson.

And then, out of the blue, the great break happened. I was discovered by Little Big Town in Sweden when we toured together.

They believed in me so much; they got me my first major record and management deal. The stage was finally set, and I’d open for them once we released my new record that was inspired on top of the Pyramid of the Sun in Teotihuacan, Mexico. It’d been a long road already, and I was ‘too old’ by Nashville standards, but with my bilingual anthem and first single Vamonos (Let’s Go) I was destined to be the Selena of Country Americana music.

I was dressed to the nines, too sick to eat, skinny, and shaky, but grateful to meet with the head of the record label to pick the video director for my first single. I was as composed as I could be as I sat down and took a deep breath, and said, Well, Mike, I just thought I’d let you know that my husband and I have decided to get a divorce. We are going to do it very amicably. I am so grateful I have this music to step into. I am ready to get started.

Mike was shocked and quiet as he tried to recalibrate his thoughts to respond. His enthusiasm quickly turned to visible concern. He paused for what seemed like forever, looked up at me with compassion, and said, Stephanie, we can’t spend a million dollars on you now. You are about to be a mess. I’m sorry, but we will have to see where we are in a year.

Mic drop.

Heart stop.

What? Something exploded in me. No. No. No.

Just as I had done a few days before, I panicked, scrambled for hope, and burst into tears, begging him to put this record out now. I sobbed openly and desperately, recounting all that was ready and the years it took to get here.

He said, I’m so sorry, Stephanie, but we just can’t take the risk.

My heart bottomed out. I could barely breathe or make it to my car. I was devastated. I’d lost everything. With five words, the painful hit records of my life story were playing over and over again. I didn’t even try to fight off the old abusive mantras I was trained to believe.

They were right. Who do you think you are? You are not good enough. You are not pretty enough, talented, or skinny enough. You are a Mexican. You’re not Mexican enough. See, they were right. You are too old.

I went home and back to bed for weeks, despondent, depressed with bouts of rage that erupted and painted what would become my red rage womb of a room. I was angry at God, angry at life, but mostly angry at myself. I worked so hard to build a new life, but as Oprah says, You don’t get what you want; you get what you believe.

Months went by, and the horrific fire of the divorce that burned both of us and all we loved played out and broke me and our broken family even more. The rage was just a disguise for the devastation and wreckage underneath. I cracked and crumbled. The depression set in. I wasn’t sure if I would - or even wanted to - come back to life.

But I have to; I have a daughter. I can’t saddle her with the same pain!

During my darkest hour, my publicist and dear friend Alison, who was deeply concerned, gifted me a healing weekend in June of 2009. It was a weekend led by Toltec teachers under the lineage of Don Miguel Ruiz, author of the book The Four Agreements.

Every day offered a new experience that exercised my pain and body. I was ripe for release, and I came undone, wept, and screamed for what seemed like hours. I wrote down my fears, turned them over to the flames, and walked on fire. I climbed into a native American sweat lodge, sang, prayed, and wept some more.

I was used to talking about what was going on in me as a way to try and make sense of my trauma. I called the memories up, put feet to my prayers, and through ceremony, released the energy I’d stuffed in my body for decades. It was hugely cathartic, and in one weekend, I felt a little better for the first time in years.

The last experience was an overnight ceremony in a medicine wheel under the stars. There, in a fateful field of dreams, I met my spiritual partner and now husband, Jeremy Pajer. Gratefully, much to my surprise, with my heart a little less burdened, magic happened, and the beginning of a new life and eventual sacred marriage ensued.

Jeremy had been adopted into the Lakota tribe and carried many experiential rites of passage and healing ceremonies from sweat lodges, fire walks, breathwork, yoga, and vision quests, and he was a Toltec dreamer and teacher.

We became a part of a new tribe of misfit, like-minded souls and dreamers. We spent days laughing, swimming, watching movies, feeding horses, hiking, and learning how to be children again during what would be known as the summer of love.

It was the first time in my life my restless heart rested. I felt a new calm, joy, and wonder I hadn’t ever experienced. Jeremy embraced my daughter, and she took to him. A beautiful new life emerged.

I gratefully continued to heal. My body, which I brilliantly disassociated from to escape the pain, was like a lockbox of secrets. It held the key to my freedom. I didn’t know why I was so depressed, suicidal, uncomfortable in my skin, and full of shame until the lockbox opened. One by one, the stories held in my body, grief from my life and generations before, came rising up and out.

That summer, I was amazed everything unfolded as it did. I still held a twinge of pain when I thought of my music, but I was more grateful to be healing and becoming whole. I surrendered to the idea of a new life and gave up my dream.

But the universe wasn’t done with me or my dream yet. The great mystery and my destiny were calling.

One sweltering August night, my new tribe gathered on the porch under a canopy of stars. Jeremy mentioned I was a recording artist. Everyone encouraged me to share my unreleased Fiery Angel album. Soon we were all laughing, dancing, playing air guitar, and rocking out, with everyone singing along to Vamonos.

Life is a party

I wanna live it

I don’t want to waste another minute

Vamonos!

The next morning, I was tearfully blown away to wake up to a $1000 check under my pillow from a lady I didn’t know. She said, My heart told me to give you a check and a message—get back to work and book some gigs!

The next day I called Abbey at Luckenbach, found a band of believers, and hit the road. It was not a million-dollar campaign, but I was moving in the direction of my dream once again.

Time after time,