7 Years Ago....What Really Happened At The Beginning?

My official shaman initiation began seven short years ago, but my symptoms started when I was just a kid. I've had many friends and family ask me to shed light on what my experiences were like, especially at the beginning. I don't know what it is about these last two years, but people are awakening more than ever before. My belief is that the more light workers we have in the world, the better it will be. But, it is also an indication that somewhere in the near future there will be a great need for shaman healers and light workers. A big wave of sickness is yet to come. The increase in awakening today will prepare us for something that is to come in the future. Until then, my beginning can be understood in two parts. The first were my experiences as a kid and the second are my experiences that led to the point of my official initiation in 2016.

In the past, I have shared a little about my experiences as a kid. I remember distinctively that I was five years old when my "shaman symptoms" started, which was a result of a terrifying dream. To this day I still remember ever so clear that dream and how it made me feel. Shamans tend to remember their dreams in very great detail, even years later. From then on, I started experiencing night terrors, horrifying nightmares; which explained why I was afraid of the dark all the way up until I was in college. I used a Jesus nightlight that my mom got for me. In high school and well into my college years, I slept with a lamp on. As a kid, I kind of just knew things before they would happen. I knew my great grandmother was going to pass away before she did because her spirit visited me in a dream just a day before she died. This happened when I was in 2nd grade, I think about seven years old or so. I also experienced sleep paralysis ever since I was a kid. I kidd you not, for almost every single night until I initiated my shaman journey, I would experience sleep paralysis. In my sleep paralysis, I'd see very scary and intense goblins, monsters, ghosts, and creatures. I would hear Hmong shaman funeral drums. Most often I'd hear an old lady screaming in my ear and it would sound Hmong but as if they spoke in backwards tongue. I forget what age I was, but as a little kid I remember taking those sharp wooden sticks and coloring them green and red. I'd tape them onto a white napkin, mark X's on the bottom, and created a "fence or gate" and taped this to my bedroom door. I remember specifically telling my parents that this fence will keep away the bad things and protect me. In our Hmong culture, green and red are sometimes used in shaman altars that marks the presence of light work. Xs marked on the bottom of joss paper is used as a protective talisman or sigil to keep out bad spirits. As a kid I did not have a full understanding of why I did these things or my experiences, and it wasn't until I initiated my journey that it all made sense.

My experiences as a kid progressed 10 folds into my teen and young adult years. When my friend passed away when we were in middle school, I became closer to him as a spirit than I did when he was alive. I had many, many visitation dreams and even today, if I try to think back to that moment I cannot recall the events. It's like a big black chunk of time missing from my memory. Then, from experiencing physical pain in my hands, joints, back, and neck, to suicidal ideation, to developing clairsentient abilities, and seeing dark energy shadows in my surrounding. So what happened seven years ago? How did I get from there to now here as a practicing Hmong shaman?

This path really was something I did not even think about or thought it was possible for me. I didn't even know how to really speak Hmong and I had a whole different life planned out for me. I was a whole different person back then and every time I look back, I barely recognize who I was. I was miserable. I felt trapped. I was sick. I was in pain. I was depressed. I always felt like something was missing from my life but I didn't know what. I never fit in and have always found it hard to have anything in common with anyone. I pandered constantly into the stars and always wondered the why questions. My last straw that was when one night I couldn't wake up from a sleep paralysis. I really thought I was going to die in my sleep because I couldn't breathe but I was aware of what was happening. I was screaming in my head. My partner tried waking me up and I'd be silent. I could feel him waking me up, calling my name or shaking me to wake me, but I couldn't snap out of the sleep paralysis. That was my breaking point because I was afraid to die in my sleep.

So seven years ago, my partner and I, together, found my master or xib fwb. I had met her a year or two prior, at my partner's family event and remember very clearly that I felt an instant connection. It felt like she was an important person to me but I didn't know why, I mean it was my first time meeting her. She felt very familiar like not having seen a close family member for a long time and then you see each other again. It was that feeling.

The picture above was my very first initiation ritual from 2016. A Hmong shaman must first travel to the land of spirits and confirm or deny that shaman spirits have chosen you (apprentice) to be a shaman healer. One cannot choose to become a shaman without the confirmation from a master/elder shaman. We cannot initiate ourselves. Then, they will seat you on their shaman horse (a wooden shaman bench that shamans use as transportation into the spirit world), cover your face with their shaman veil, intertwine into your fingers their shaman bells, and the shaman master will summon upon the shaman spirits to guide your first initiation ritual. Some people will shake and go into a trance, like I did. Others will not, which simply means that they must find a different shaman master.

This experience was my first ever shamanic trance. My body was electrifying. Energy flowed through every vein, blood drop, and cell in my body. Every cell and pore in my body was vibrating as if a switch had turned on. My hands and feet clenched. My face felt like it was on fire. My lips numb. A million flashes of random things came to my vision. The spirits came and conjured me into a shamanic trance.

I wasn't afraid of the dark anymore. For the first time in a very, very long time I stopped experiencing sleep paralysis. The night terrors stopped. I had control over the energy around me, but more so the ability to just let it flow without disruption. My shaman sickness went away. It was as if the past 22 years of my life up to that point just disappeared, like a snap of a finger, just like that, gone. I had a dream that night. I was in an old country town in Laos. I was standing in front of the door of a Hmong house and saw a mile long line of Hmong people, dressed in old traditional clothes, all lined up coming directly to me. I could see the line extending all the way up into the mountains. The first Hmong man in line approached me and said, "Son, get ready. We're coming home."

I remember so vividly that night was truly the first time I ever slept in my life. It was the first time I ever woke up too.

TFL Hmong Shaman