197: Shaman Durek on How to Hack Your Spirit and Reclaim Your Personal Power

In this week’s episode of The Light Watkins Show, host Light Watkins is in conversation with Shaman Durek where he discusses various topics related to spirituality and personal experiences. Shaman Durek challenges the concept of time and emphasizes the importance of focusing on the present moment. 

Shaman Durek shares his early spiritual experiences and how he discovered his gifts as a spiritualist. He also opens up about his challenging childhood, including abusive experiences and encounters with spirits. Lastly, he discusses the presence of spirits in homes and shares his own methods for protection and guidance. 

In this part of the conversation, Shaman Durek discusses different types of shamans and their unique abilities. He explains the rites of passage that shamans go through and shares his own near-death experience. Shaman Durek also delves into the concept of the life review and how it informs our choices and energy placement. He emphasizes the importance of choosing empowering belief systems and offers guidance on identifying authentic shamans. He clarifies the distinction between shamans and ayahuasca daros. Shaman Durek also discusses various topics related to shamanism, personal power, and spirituality. He explains how to recognize legitimate shamans and the importance of integration after working with plant medicine. 

Shaman Durek also emphasizes the impact of trauma on the body and the need to reclaim personal power. He shares surprising aspects of his personality, such as his love for playfulness and imagination. Additionally, he discusses breaking generational curses, choosing love and compassion, and cultivating psychic abilities. 

Transcript

“SD: “I started crying. I'll never forget it. And I said, I don't want to die alone. Please don't leave me. I want to die with someone by my side. I don't want to be alone when I die. So all of my organs were shutting down because my kidney stopped working and my potassium levels were shooting way up high. And it was the most excruciating pain. And then, when that happened, I lost my breathing. So I couldn't breathe. I was pounding my throat and they had to put a hole in my neck to get the air out and I still wasn't getting the air out that strong. Then my lungs collapsed. Then my heart stopped. And that's when I finally died. And it was such. An experience because while you're dying, you see everything, it's not like you're blacked out and it's just happens, and now you're on the other side. You see yourself dying, but you can't do anything about it.”

[INTRODUCTION]

Hey friend, welcome back to The Light Watkins show. I'm Light Watkins and I have conversations with ordinary folks just like you and me who've taken extraordinary leaps of faith in the direction of their path, their purpose, or what they've identified as their mission in life. And in doing so they've been able to positively impact and inspire the lives of many other people who've either heard about their story or who've witnessed them in action or people who've directly benefited from their work. 

And the goal is to expose you to as many people as possible who found their path and to humanize them. And then after hearing story after story, hopefully you give yourself permission to move further in the direction of whatever feels like your path and purpose because what you'll see is that anyone who does that has to overcome many of the same obstacles that you may be dealing with right now. 

And this week, I'm in conversation with a dear friend, Shaman Durek. We've been friends for a couple of decades now. Shaman Durek is a sixth generation shaman. He's the author of the bestseller Spirit Hacking: Shamanic Keys to Reclaim your Personal Power, Transform Yourself and Light Up the World. 

He studied extensively around the world, extracting the best from all of the world's philosophies, religions, spiritual teachings, and theories. And as you'll hear in the interview, Shaman Durek has his own perspective on life and on spirituality. He is as controversial as he is playful. He's colorful, but most of all, he exudes love and kindness. His path has not been an easy one by any stretch, and he'll take us through as many ups and downs as he was growing up in a family of shamans and sort of finding his own way. 

To be honest, I didn't know much about shamanism before reading Shaman Durek's book and doing my own research. And for those of you who also don't know what a shaman is or what they do, I think you're going to appreciate how Shaman Durek breaks down the origin of shamanism, as well as the different types of shamans. 

We also spoke about the illusion of time. And speaking of which, Shaman Durek went into great detail about a nonlinear near death experience that he had where he flatlined for about four minutes after suffering through a series of seizures. And it reminded me of that movie Contact. Did you see contact with Jodie Foster and Matthew McConaughey where she goes into some transportation device that was evidently created by aliens. And then she ends up visiting this really strange beach scene in some alien dimension.

Well, Shaman Durex experience of dying was very similar to that where he was on this beach and he encountered these beings and he got to choose what kind of body he wanted. Anyway, I'll let him tell you about everything that he witnessed while he was away from his body but that was really fascinating too. And we also talked about how most people aren't approaching plant medicine, mainly ayahuasca in the correct way. And we talk about how to tap into your own shamanic powers. 

Shaman Durek has worked with celebrities like Gwyneth Paltrow, tech gurus like Dave Asprey. He's been profiled in People Magazine, Vanity Fair, the New York. Times. Good Morning, America. He's got a recurring role on a show called The Doctors where he aids guests in overcoming challenges that are impacting the connection between their emotional and physical wellbeing. Shaman Durek also facilitates online teachings through the Shaman School, which he created, and he's the host of the Ancient Wisdom Today Podcast. 

Again, I've known Shaman Dirk for years. We met back when I was first starting out in my own career of teaching meditation, and I've seen him skyrocket to international acclaim over the years. So I'm excited for this one. It's long overdue, and I'm honored to introduce you. To my very dear friend, Shaman Durek.

[00:04:55] LW: It's kind of fortuitous because you and I are speaking on the 29th of February, which means we're in a leap year and you have a chapter, you've dedicated a whole chapter in your book, Spiritual Hacking saying that leap years and time and all that is a bunch of nonsense. So let's start the conversation there. What are you talking about?

[00:05:15] SD: Well, I just feel that people put too much emphasis on a lot of things that aren't really necessarily productive to the practical practicality of spirituality and its evolutionary process. I think you know, when people talk about the now moment, there's no such thing as the now, there can never be a thing called the now that's a self created self, Um, an activated thing that you do with your mind to say, this is now, but universally speaking, energy constantly has to move because if it doesn't, then nothing can evolve and nothing can be transferred. you see in front of you is not It's, It's constantly moving. And the only thing that makes it permanent is your reaction and the way you think about it.

And so I feel like people trap themselves and a lot of these things that limit them from what's really potentially necessary in our evolution, which is the ability to see and understand ourselves as these sentient, beautiful beings, these sovereign beings of great power and our ability to that that awareness and love and creativity and joy with our brothers and sisters on the planet versus needing to be caught up in all of these different things that are very, I see as a form of a distraction.

[00:06:30] LW: So I wanted to open with that question because I wanted you to display a bit of your perspective. Obviously, you're very wise soul. And I listened to a few of your interviews, but I think you and I have a special relationship because we met and crossed paths multiple times back when I first arrived in Los Angeles.

So I got to Los Angeles in 2002 and I moved to West Hollywood a couple of months after I arrived. I would see you at that Whole Foods, remember the whole Foods on...

Santa Monica and Fairfax. So whole foods was like the Erewhon of that time. Erewhon sucked Erewhon food was like hospital food at the time. And whole foods was where everybody went every day to get lunch. And so I would see you there often, you and what's his name? The French guy... 

[00:07:24] SD: Mateo... 

[00:07:25] LW: Mateo. Yeah. Yeah. And we didn't really have a bunch of conversations, but we would always acknowledge one another because we were like, I knew you had something to do with spirituality. We're both black men, right? And there weren't that many black men at all in the sort of wellness. There wasn't even really a wellness scene at the but Yeah, man, you always, you had a presence and I know a lot of people can think that, the shaman lingo that you may be using now is something that, it's like, there's a lot of Johnny come lately is happening around here these days. And can say that you have always been this person that I'm witnessing now. And I just want to talk about...

[00:08:15] SD: It actually goes back further. If you really want to get clarity. you know, A guy by the name of Dr. David. And Dr. David has this place in San Francisco called the San Francisco Medical Research Foundation and the Global Peace Foundation. And when you first came into going into your spirituality, you met Dr. David, and he told me about you. And this is when I used to work for Dr. David as uh, personal assistant. And so he had told me, you have to meet Brother Light. And I said, Oh, I see. I would love to meet Brother Light. But I was so caught up with him with the Global Peace Foundation of trying to convert Alcatraz into a healing center for global um, action that I was doing all his campaign stuff and everything that I didn't get a chance to, but there was one time where he was speaking to you and I said hello to you on the telephone, but maybe you have forgotten. So when I saw you in Whole Foods, I was like, Oh, Light. It's good to see you. That's the reason why I said what I said to you.

[00:09:17] LW: Interesting. Interesting. Interesting. Yeah. I didn't know that. I didn't know about that connection. That's interesting. That just goes to show there's always multiple sides to every story, right?

[00:09:27] SD: And there's only one Light. So that's how it was easy for me to remember.

[00:09:31] LW: Yeah.

[00:09:32] SD: There's only one of you.

[00:09:33] LW: Okay. So let's do this man, just for the benefit of the listener. Let's take it way back. Let's take it back to the San Francisco area days growing up. And what was that like? Talk about your upbringing. What were your parents into? What kind of stuff were they talking about as you were just a really young person? What were you into before you started having these premonitions having these interesting experiences internally.

[00:09:58] SD: You know, when it goes back to when I was a kid in my crib and my home and seeing spirits coming into my room um, ed in African clothes, some of them were dressed in pelts, like very Viking and other ones you you know, beings who were just standing there who didn't say anything and the ones who did say something they would talk to me and tell me things about my family and about you know my gifts and who I am and all this and I'll never forget my father and my aunt who was in living with us at the time said that he was talking to my dad over my crib and talking about, Oh, I think he is communicating to our ancestors because I would say mama and my dad thought I was saying mama, but I was actually saying mama, which is one of my great 

grandmothers. And so when you show, when you exhibit that level of connectivity to your ancestors, in our culture, which comes from Yoruban and um, and West African culture, which is where my roots stem from, we in our family see that as a gift of being a spiritualist. 

Now a spiritualist is what we call a shaman in the more Mongolian Saxon way of saying, but a spiritualist is someone who is able to communicate with the ancestors who has been given anointings and blessings over their head to be able to there, to to be a steward of the rooted knowledge, the rooted medicine.

So in different African cultures, you have Baba Lao. You have spiritualists, you have different forms of those who carry the African wisdom from the ancestors. And my family bloodline of, we have a lot of spiritualists. Some of them may stay true to who they were and others felt That they weren't able to express the full completeness of their spirituality because they had to hide it in Catholicism from people, the white man, as I would say, as my ancestors would say, because of the ridicule and because of the condemnation that they would go through by practicing their rooted knowledge.

So my grandmother, Mammal, was one of those who was very private, but also stay very true to our roots and so did my aunt Shirley. And so did other people in my family. My father did as well for quite some time. And then my father started taking more cues from my grandfather, Leon, who decided to walk away from that tradition and be more into becoming a Catholic full on, and then Seventh Day Adventist.

So I grew up with one side of my family holding very true to who we are as spiritualists was what we call shamans, right? The ones who are here to be the stewards for the spirit world, and then the religious Seventh Day Adventist, you know, splitting our sinks from meat to dairy, going church, which is like our synagogue, but you would have Shabbat on Friday, then you would worship God on Saturday through the Shabbat and then on Sunday, you went to church. 

And so when you have these two juxtapositions and then you still have a father who's aware what's happening to you. So you're growing up as a kid, you're having these juxtapositions and then you have a mother who's a master psychic. We call her an oracle who is doing all of these spiritual things with you. Like my mother would play the drums and have me dance until I fell into a trance. And then she would tell me, what do you see? And I would tell her, I see birds, I see this and I do that. And then she's like, okay, let's do again. How, Let's see how deeper you can go. And then my father having a conflict between, Oh, that's wonderful but grandpa's going to find out, I'm going to get in trouble because my father's relationship with my grandfather how can we Oh, he lived right next door to us for one. uh, built a a, a ranch in Sacramento and and also my dad built one next to him. So they had a horse ranch and my grandfather would sometimes just pop in. And so when these things were happening and my mom was doing all of these things, my grandfather would catch my mom and then go to my dad and say, my mom's a witch needs to be. you need to divorce her. She's bringing darkness into our family. against against Jesus Christ. And then you have the other side of the family talking to my dad being like, but that's our roots. That's where we come from. So of course he would would marry a woman like this. So it was always a conflict between him watching that conflict. And then my father moving us to Foster City by powers got stronger.

I started having this spirits visit me in the night and wake me up out of my sleep and talk to me. I started having spirits say come take a walk with me and I would walk with them down the street into the mud and to where all these dead birds would be. I talk about in my book and I would walk with do burial rituals and leave offerings for these birds and come home with mud and my dad was like, where, why did you leave the house at three o'clock in the morning by yourself as a kid? And I said, a spirit told me to and, and and bury the birds and their bones. And so all of these things were happening to me. My parents had divorced when I was two and a half. So my mother told me she was going on a two week vacation and she never came back and that was devastating for me because I took all my toys to the window and I waited for her and waited. And then my sister Angelina came and said, mom's not coming home. So I felt like my mom was at the time, a great security blanket for me and these, these things that were happening to me.

So after that, my father remarried and I think when the the pain really started to hit in. Is when my dad remarried to a Hawaiian Japanese woman named Jerry who has became my step mom, and I remember her saying, sitting down in our living room and saying, I'm going to be your mother now. So I was just excited to have a mother. I was like, okay, my mother left, but now I get another mother. But she came in with hardcore Catholicism, where she's like rosaries you know, everything that came up to me spiritually, she would say it was the work of the devil. And so there was a lot of abuse, and my kind of turned from from and, and and our ways Um, and the only person I had was my And my grandmother's sister, Hazel, who stayed very true to our culture, and they were the ones who helped me to cultivate my gifts, while my father would make comments and share with me, like, oh, I remember when I was a kid, I used to chop the wood and put it to boil the water for a grandmother so she can heal people on this wooden table, and I would watch her rub the herbs together, and he's like, yeah, and then spirits would come and talk to me and all that kind of stuff. He goes, but grandpa said, we have to walk away from that. 

So he would tell me things that I was going through, but then at the same time asking me to hide it because he didn't want grandpa or to find out because my grandfather was hardcore. And when I say hardcore, mean, Seventh Day Adventist minister on television, running churches, doing every type of revival you can think of. And there was no, he was very old school. So if you didn't obey him, you would have to kneel on rice for hours and like, He was very strict and beatings were the norm in our family. And when my step mom came in, the beatings became more treacherous, more not I'm beating you because I'm trying to correct you, I'm actually beating you cause I want to cause you pain. 

And so a very part of my young childhood was having to navigate constantly being having blood on my body and shaking and vomiting and dealing with spirits talking to me and seeing things and knowing things and going through the intense beatings and trying to keep my mind from being completely destroyed because the pain, the beatings, the intensity of those things were so intense. I mean, I'll give you an example of how intense. My stepmom would come out of the room and say, call me and my sister to come into the room. And then they would open a closet and say, choose your weapon. 

And we had, they made all these different weapons for us to choose and we'd have to choose them. Then we had to admit our sins, whatever those were, and even the ones that she made up for us. And then she would stand on a chair with her rosary. And then she would tell to to cleanse us from the devil, and they would beat us and beat us until we were bleeding, until we were shaking and convulsing. So we couldn't even walk back to our bedrooms. They would drag us with a blanket back to our bedrooms, so, and then come in my room and have the and we we grew up with money. So growing up with money. I always felt was a disadvantage because I had friends who didn't have money and I enjoyed being in their homes because least their families loved each other. That's what I for me, it was tutors. No one ever showed up to my baseball games, my soccer games, my football my, my recitals. It was always someone my dad hired because he was always too busy to come. And there's always this white man with a checkered shirt. waving to me and my friends will go, is that your dad? And I'm like, no, it's not my dad. It's my dad who works for my you know? and so that was embarrassing. 

There was never time spent together as a family. It was never like we're going to spend time together and be at each other's energy. It was servant, some servant that was hired to come in and spend time with me. So I never really had a relationship. with my father unless we did what he wanted to do, which is either go to a basketball um, or go to a for, for holidays, which we never really spent time with him then because we were always with the nanny. So I didn't really know. I only knew the times when me and him finally like, we go to diners once in a while, we'd have these deep talks and he would tell me about why am I I have these gifts and why these things are happening and why it's important for me to hide them and never show them to the world because the world will never understand me, the world will destroy me and people will make fun of me and I can't exist in a world like that and be successful if I'm running around telling everyone I speak to spirits.

uh, You can imagine the intensity of dealing with child abuse, dealing with the spiritual things where spirits and when I say I mean, I'm talking like every night I was visited by some kind of spirit, if it was from the darkness or it came from the light, they all had something all The ones from darkness were trying to scare me to get me to not use my powers to feel like I was disempowered. They would lay in my bed and say things like, turn around and look at me. And then I would hear this voice of an angel say to me, don't turn and look at them. Stay where you are. Don't look at And like, so that was scary as a kid, you know? and I remember my sister saying to me why are so many spirits in our home? Why do we have so many spirits? Even my cousin Ulu girl from Hawaii, she would come over and she's a trans medium and she'd wake up and she'd be like, the spirits are all here. And I would see them and see them walking around the house.

It was very uncomfortable. And then I, my aunt said to me, you have to get comfortable with it because this is what you're going to be dealing with the rest of your life. You have to get comfortable with it. You need to talk to them. You need to learn the different types of spirits there are out there. You have to invite it all in. And I think that was really scary for me for Most of my life, all the way up until my twenties, finally was able to get a hang of it.

[00:21:45] LW: What did they look like or feel like? Like your everyday average spirit when you're a kid and they're in your bed with you and all of that? Do they look like leprechauns or what you would imagine a spirit would look like with top hats? 

[00:22:00] SD: So there are different types of spirits. So there were spirits that were smaller like elves, almost like small, tiny, that would climb up on my bed, and hold my nose and try to stop me from breathing.

[00:22:12] LW: Like mischievously or not like a horror movie? 

[00:22:15] SD: No, like mischievously. Then there were ones that were horrific. There was one who was so tall that he had to squeeze his body into my door and he would open the door and push the door open and squeeze his big body and he had a lot of anger and rage. And then there were ones who look like just normal people, but we're just super angelic and young, they were young faced and they were so sweet and kind. And then there were ones that look like Octopuses or jellyfish with eyes all around them, and they call themselves archangels. And then they would sometimes project themselves looking like humans with wings. And I asked them why, and they told me it was because human beings can't handle what they really look like.

So they take on the form that's most ease for a person's consciousness. Then there were ones who were taking on the shapes and forms of things that I was scared of, there were shape shifters. If I was afraid of Freddy Krueger, they would come as Freddy Krueger. If I was afraid of like the I used to call the boogeyman, then they would hang out and look like the boogeyman until I figured out later through my training that they are taking on the shapes of my fears. And so there were all kinds and then there were some that were just pure energy and pure, just pure sunlight, just like radiating light warmth. I could feel the warmth in my heart when they were in the room and I would feel this sensation in the center of my chest and then I would see this glowing energy moving like this. And then some of them were ancestors. Who looked just like they were but younger and they would come in and talk to me. 

[00:23:58] LW: Was there a certain time of the night where you would encounter these spirits? 

[00:24:02] SD: Yeah, so the time was always around 12 and 2 o'clock.

[00:24:06] LW: So you would just naturally wake up around then and just okay, what's about to happen? What's about to happen now? Who am I...

[00:24:12] SD: I was always afraid of going to sleep in my bed because of the woman. So my father got rid of my bed and even to this day, I don't sleep in a bed unless I'm with my fiance. I sleep on a couch so that I can feel that there's a backing. Yeah, like the couch you see me on right now. This is where I sleep every night. Because this is what makes me feel comfortable. I don't like when spirits sit in the bed with me and my bed goes down on one side. I don't like dealing with that. So when I'm with my fiance, I sleep in the bed with her. But when I'm at a hotel, like any place else, if a hotel, I'll sleep in a hotel, but I'll pack a bunch of pillows on one side of my body I still don't like that feeling. But yes, my father got rid of my bed and I slept on a couch all my childhood. 

[00:24:55] LW: So I lived in this house in Venice, California for about six or seven years. And someone came to the house once for some meditation stuff that I was doing and we did a couple of meditations and she said, your house is inhabited by entities, by spirits. And oddly enough, I'd been hearing noises and lots like too many cracks and creaks to just say, oh, that's just the house settling. There was like something else going on. And it started to intensify after I had that conversation with her. And then I very deliberately sage my house. And then I had a conversation with my grandmother who was no longer in her body. And I just said, hey, I need you to protect me from whatever's in here because it just doesn't make me feel that comfortable. And after I had my own little makeshift ceremony my exorcism ceremony, I didn't have any more of the spirit stuff.

And in one instance, I really, I still remember to this day because it was so crazy. I was in the bed with my girlfriend who was living with me at the time. And we were both. We weren't light sleepers, but we would know if someone had gotten up to go to the bathroom or whatever. And I had, we both had side tables and on my side table, I had a bottle of water and I had a, there was a nice size lamp.

The next morning. We're talking, we're like cuddling and stuff. And then I turned to get out of the bed and I see my lamp is sitting on the floor. Like somebody had lifted it up because the chord wasn't that long. So if I had accidentally knocked it over, I would have heard that, or it would have been on its side or, but it looked like someone had lifted it up and just gently placed it on the floor. And that was before the whole exorcism thing that I experienced. 

So anyway, my question to you, did my Mamal help you with this or you didn't ask her for some guidance. 

[00:26:48] SD: Yes, I did. Of course I did. I asked all my ancestors and they told me that my path in this life to be this shaman that I am is required for me to go through these things. 

[00:27:00] LW: It's a rite of passage. 

[00:27:01] SD: It's a rite of passage because I'm a spirit shaman. So there's different types of shamans in the world. Shamans who are earth shamans, very young age spirits will teach them how to connect with plants, anything that has to do with plants or frogs or anything that gives medicine from the earth. So they'll immediately be drawn to that. It won't even be like they go and study. It's just a natural thing they'll be drawn to the plants will speak to them and tell them I'm medicine or I'm poison or I'm good for the eyes or I'm good for the stomach and I'm good for this.

And then a lot of times shamans will make diet does are different type of ceremonies to, to put the thing in their body and experience it for themselves. To merge, it's called merging is what we call it in shamanism. You merge with the plant. 

But I'm a spirit shaman. 

So fire shamans, on the other hand, are drawn to fire. So when they're young and they're being called by spirit to be a fire shaman, their tendency is to play with fire, to be enthralled by fire, to love the heat of things. And they mostly are, will be doing. Fire rituals, those types of shamans, Thomas skulls, where you go into closed spaces where it's super hot and you sweat until your body starts to take you on those journeys. They work with firestones, sun ceremonies, all these different fire rituals that there's so many, I can't name them all. 

And then, water shamans will be drawn to oceans, to rivers, to the rain, to the lakes. They love water. Every time they feel the need to cleanse, they use water as a cleansing and they learn about symbolisms and songs and different things to say into the water so that the undying spirits, which are the water spirits, they take in those codes. And you'll always see water spirits, like in Bali, they'll dump water over you, water temples, those are all governed by water shamans. Water shamans, like in Polynesian in, in like Philippines, they'll put you in water to the point where you can't breathe, and get these intense visions these types of things. Some cultures, they'll just pour constant water over your head, and you get these intensities.

And then air shamans are more throat, they communicate through sound frequencies. Also, spirit shamans can do that as well. We can all jump through each other's thing, but the thing that we breathe the easiest in is the one that we are. 

Air shamans will use like sound tonation. They'll speak, they'll call, they'll cover the sounds of birds and animals in nature very easily. They are really good with musical instruments that evoke energies. They can say, speak in tongues over a problem you have, and the poison will start coming out of your body. You'll start coughing, you'll start shaking, you go through all these types of different things. So for instance I know a lot about air shamanism because I've studied it a great portion. So I know how to use certain words that activate the body to do certain things. 

Now, spirit shamans is a bit challenging for some people because then there's not a lot of on the planet because spirit shamans are questionable to religion because spirit shamans navigate the spirit world. They know exactly how the spirit world functions. They know how the practicality of the spirit world connects with our world. They know the understandings of the different types of spirits that are out there because they've been visited by so many of them and had contact with them because spirit shamans are like magnets to the spirit world. They walk into the spirit world. 

And all the spirits start introducing themselves to them because they can hear them and see them and feel them. Spirit shamans can also go into different realms. They can go into the higher realms and they can go into the deepest darkest, deepest underworld because they're not affected by... in a young age, they are, but they have to learn by these intensities that they go through these rites of passage to be able to be comfortable traveling to the underworld. Now, a lot of people who aren't even shamans do travel to the underworld, and you always will know when you're in the underworld because the light is very dim there, the sky may be red there, or you may try to turn on a light and you can't turn it on and you try to turn on a light and it doesn't turn on and it just stays in this very grayish tone. That's the first part of the underworld. 

And as you get comfortable with the projected ideas of fear and terror and all these different things that you have to deal with in the underworld of people's loopings, what we call them, where they're looping through their horrible nightmares that they keep playing out and you keep passing through them, the more you start to get comfortable being there. And so when you see something that looks all scary and crazy, you're not reactive to it anymore. You're just like, okay, I see this is what this person is going through. This soul is being torment, tormenting themselves. There is no hell. There's no punishment from God. It's all of your making. 

And so in shamanism, we don't go into I'm a being of the light and I only talk to the light. No, I talk to all forms of spirits because I delight in talking to them as I'm delighted in talking to all forms of spirits because I want to be there to hold space for them to move and to continue to evolve. 

[00:32:18] LW: So in order to properly help people, you have to know what it's like to leave your body and to quote, die. That's a rite of passage as well. So talk about that moment because that's when you and I met that. I think this happened shortly after we first interacted in person that I got the emails, Shaman Durek is having some health problems or something like this. Talk about that. 

[00:32:46] SD: So in every path of a shaman, there's two types of shamans. There's shamans who go through a rites of passage. And then there's wounded healer shamans who constantly keep getting wounded as a way of breaking down more and more clarity over human existence. And so it depends which role you go into. I happen to be a wounded shaman, so it's not pleasant, but I deal with it.

And I remember I was talking to this African Shaman from Kenya and he was saying to me that he's a shaman who's not a wounded shaman, but he said he had a lot of respect for me for being a wounded shaman because a wounded shaman doesn't just have one rites of passage. We have them continuously throughout our life. So a bombardment of continuous suffering and pain for the sake of service. it's really interesting. So when I found out that I was a wounded shaman, I was in Belize, in the jungle. And I was working with a medicine woman in the jungle in Belize. And she was putting me, on a vision quest through these leaves with this, with the steam. And showed me that I was going to die a horrible death. And, I, for me, because I also have a very logical mind. I was thinking, oh, she means I'm just going to die and, some spiritual transformation is going to happen And that's what it's going to be. 

And when I was in Greece because I was living in London at one point and I had this guy in London named John Marcis who invited me because he's a hypnotherapist to Greece because I didn't believe in hypnotherapy at all because I was trained as a shaman and the way I think as a spiritualist, so I didn't think that hypnotherapy had some really big purpose. And so of course, for me, it's always about me eating crow because I love when I'm completely wrong about things. I think that's the whole greatest thing about evolution is being wrong. And so I got to Greece and to Athens and went to his course and he waved this watch in front of my face. And I was like, nothing happened. And he goes, really? And I said, yeah, I didn't feel anything. And then he hits this tape recorder and it was me talking in the tape recorder. So I guess it did happen and I had no recollection of it happening. And I said that I was talking like a very soft voice, and I was telling him in the room of his students that I was the oracle of Delphi in another life. And I need to return to Delphi to see my sisters. 

Now, I never heard of Delphi ever. I've never read a book about it, never heard the word, never ever crossed my mind even to hear Delphi. I don't even know what Delphi is. So I was like, what is that? And he goes, do you know who you are? And I what are you talking about? He goes, I have to call my parents. So he called his parents. His parents invited us to their country house. 

Long story short, his parents, father was a person who studied a lot of the old ancient Greek knowledge. And he told me that I am a person who travels from life to life, leading masses of people to reach their highest potential. And if I was the Oracle of Delphi, then I'd have that power still. And he asked me, during the great wars on earth, will you protect my children? And I heard these three women speak and they called themselves the ones who decide your fate, the sisters of fate. They said, we are the sisters of fate and say yes to him. And so I said, yes. 

The morning came they took me to Delphi the whole time. I slept. I got there. Soon as we arrived in Delphi I went into this trance and I saw myself as a young woman. I knew where everything was I could read everything they brought a person to come to take us on a tour and I knew where everything was. She's okay what was there if you know everything. I said, that's where they used to bring the slaves, families would come with their cattle and they would sleep here, and then the wealthier people would be here. There's a Medusa statue here. Like I knew everything. 

And when I went to where I used to spend this time where they used to have me propelled up on this, I just sit on this pedestal with this nasty smoke that used to come into my face in that lifetime. And then I would go into a trance and I would tell people what I saw. I saw my death. I saw myself dying. It threw me off a little bit because I thought I was going to live this long life, but that all I kept seeing was my death, replayed to me over and over again. The date of my death, the moment of my death, not the exact date, like, the 11th or the 12th, but the month and in that timeframe. And I saw it. And So I told my family, I going to die next spring. And they're like, what, do you mean you're going to die. I'm like, I'm going to die a very horrible death. I want to prepare you all. So you're not caught off guard. And my sister would be like, Oh God, why are you getting this from?

I said for one, the woman in the jungle told me who I trained with. And two, I also saw it in Delphi. And when I went to a psychic, they did a tarot card reading and they kept saying that, they decided to look at my palm and they looked at my palm and they said lifeline stops and then it starts again, a new lifeline. And so I was like, I guess I'm going to die because I've been told this and I feel it. I don't know why I have to go through this. 

And my aunt said to me that if that's what the spirits want, then that's what the spirits want. And I was like, Oh, that's really helpful. So I basically did whatever and about springtime came I went back to the, I went to the jungle, back within a month of coming back. I shot a commercial with Ellen DeGeneres, Dance. 

And days after the commercial, I wake up in the morning there's a spirit on the edge of my bed looking at me and it said, to me, are you ready? And I said, ready for what? And it said, ready for us to rip you apart. And I was like, why? And it said, because that's the only way that this, these gifts that you've asked for can happen. And immediately, I was like, yes. And I got up. The whole room started spinning. I fell to the floor. I crawled on the floor to a phone. I called my friend Marcus.

Marcus came as fast as he could. I was hyperventilating on the floor. I couldn't stand. He picks me up, puts me in his truck, starts driving me to the hospital. I have a seizure. My head smashes into the dashboard over and over. So he calls. I wake up out of the seizure. The ambulance is putting me in an ambulance from his car. I'm in the ambulance. I have eight rolling seizures again. I'd look at the person in the ambulance and said, I've never had a seizure before. This is fascinating. This is what a human seizure. feels like, He goes, what? I said it's a human experience. It's a seizure. I've never had one. So now I know what it talks about. People say I have a seizure. I know what it feels like. 

So then he's you're very interesting by saying that. That's very strange. No, one has ever said that to me and so then he drives me to hospital at the Los Angeles general hospital. And they pushed me in and they had no rooms available and they left me like by the emergency area. My friend Marcus comes in. He grabs my hand and he's it's okay. Everything's gonna be okay. Just breathe. All of a sudden the room turns into this liquid and everything starts melting and it's pure light. And this woman steps out of the light and she tells me. It's time. So I, all of a sudden Marcus goes, who are you talking to? Just now you're you were talking out loud, like you're talking in your sleep, but I kept trying to get your attention. You weren't responding. And then I said, I'm going to die right now. I don't want it. I want to, he goes, no, you're not, you're overreacting. You're not going to die And I started crying. I'll never forget it. And I said, it always brings up emotions for me. I I don'tt want to die alone. Please don't leave me. I want to die with someone by my side. I don't want to be alone when I die, and so he's went and go a doctor, I need to get a doctor. 

And so he runs to get a doctor and he comes back and I'm like, he goes, when is it going to happen? I said, they told me it's going to start in a couple of minutes. And then all of a sudden I felt someone ripping my body apart, like literally ripping my body apart. I felt knives and things cutting my arms off, cutting my organs out. And what was happening was that my body was shutting down. So all of my organs were shutting down because my kidney stopped working and my potassium levels were shooting way up high. So it felt like to me, from a medical standpoint, as the way my doctor explains it, is that your organs were shutting down one by one. And that's why you felt that intense pain in different areas body. But I felt it. And it was the most excruciating pain. And then, when that happened, then I lost my breathing.

So I couldn't breathe. So I was pounding my throat and they had to put a hole in my neck to get the air out and I still wasn't getting the air out that strong. Then my lungs collapsed. Then my heart stopped. And that's when I finally died. And it was such an experience because while you're dying, you see everything. 

It's not like you're blacked out and it's just happens. And now you're on the other side. Like you see yourself dying, but you can't do anything about it, you know. And I remember screaming. I thought I was screaming, but it was actually in my head because I actually couldn't breathe. Make it stop. It's too painful. I can't handle it. And I kept hearing the voice say it's getting painful because you're fighting us. Don't fight us. Just surrender. And finally, the pain got to an all high level that I just finally just said, forget it. I can't fight anymore. 

Because I'm a fighter, let me tell you. And I'm a Scorpio, so I'm a quadruple Scorpio. So I'm like, really about holding on. Right? And I was trying to hold on for my dear life. And it wasn't happening. And it was so scary, but at the same time, I felt like I was prepared my whole life for it through all my shamanic experiences. And being this spiritualist person. And then I went into this very dark space and then light was coming in. And then all of a sudden I realized that I was actually watching my life being shown to me. I was watching myself being born and I was watching myself. I was watching my mother give birth and then I was watching everything I did and how everything I ever said or thought and how it affected the world. 

I didn't know that when you argue with someone, you're actually creating chaos energy that is causing hurricanes and causing someone in the hospital who's fighting for their life all of these things are magnetizing negative flows or positive flows into the different fields of consciousness. I was so dumbfounded. And when I say dumbfounded, not like I was dumbfounded in a sense, it was very gobsmacked. I was very in awe of how much we affect things, on a not just on a global level, but on a universal level. And that was shown to me. And after I saw all of those things, it was like this energy of light was there to see how I processed it. And when I processed it, I had this immense love and then all of a sudden I ended up on this beach, and the woman standing in front of me talking to me telepathically telling me about why earth is what it is and why we suffer and what the whole purpose is of what us being on earth and, you know, why she erased my memories and I asked her to do it and why I went through my pain in my childhood and they couldn't help me, because I asked them not to interfere and all this information.

One question I had was why is all the suffering the way it is for humanity? And they said to me, malfunction in thinking. Humans don't use their consciousness in the right way. And I had no more questions and I got to visit friends. I didn't know in heaven that you can race cars and fly. You can change your form to a male or female or to an energy or to a spark or to a sound wave. You can swim, you can go hiking, everything you could imagine is there but nothing harms you. There's no pain. There's no death. There's no sorrow. There's just love and play like kids being in their own universe, their own heaven. I had my own heaven. All my friends I want to visit had their own heaven of how they saw it and then we had community places where we created together. 

And when I say how amazing it was, it wasn't like some kind of spirit thing. Like when you sat in a chair, you sat in a chair like you do here. When you fly, you feel yourself like you're flying like a bird, like fast, you know? So it wasn't like effervescent or anything. it was like real, you know, like people could eat pizza there and you could taste the pizza and it tastes better than it would here. Everything felt better than it was here and like multiplied. And when they told me That I could choose to come back and that I don't have, my body doesn't have to perish back into nature, I chose to come back. And when I chose to come back, they told me that if I could have my memories erased, or do I want to have full capability of remembering? And I said, I want full capability cause I want to share this beautiful place with people. I want to share about what I experienced. And so they said, okay, but you're always going to be teeter tottering on do I stay or do I go? Because you know, that all of this and what it really is this simulation planet. 

What was fascinating was how they told me I was going to be going through more pain. And, you know, when I came back, I was induced into a coma for two months. I came out of the coma. I was brain damaged. I couldn't use my fingers. I couldn't walk. I couldn't bend my toes. My hands were doing this the whole time. So I couldn't control it because my brain was not functioning. I had a food tube in my mouth, a breathing tube in my mouth and my system was completely gone. My organs were still recovering. Some of them came back, some of them didn't. So I had them having to, you know, put a bag in my stomach for me to go to the bathroom. Like everything was just like a complete vegetable. And I remember this spirit coming into the room and it came over to me. and said, why would you come back to this planet? And it said, why just go home like you don't need to stay here. And I heard this other voice speak to me, It was like the angel and the devil on your shoulder kind of thing, you know, but I wouldn't call them the devil because I'm not going to give power to them. 

The Angel said to me, don't listen to them. They just want you to leave the planet because your light is very bright. And that means that they have to transform into the light and they don't want to transform the light because they can't forgive themselves. Just listen to me and I will guide you out of this and every day the spirits would speak to me and say, we're going to play a video game because I love video games, we're going to see this light going through these chambers and you have to direct it with your mind. And if you see it off, start all over. and I kept doing that until my brain recovered. And then I did it to my body. And the only thing that didn't recover even my liver came back, was my kidneys. And my kidneys. I asked them and they said, you're a wounded healer. Something has to be sacrificed. 

So I was like, Oh God, so, and you know, I come out of there, I'm in a wheelchair for two years. I'm on dialysis, home dialysis. I finally, my I have to wait till my sister has three kids, then I get a kidney transplant from her that lasts 10 years that just went out two years ago. Now I'm back on dialysis. It's been quite an adventure, I'd say being a wounded healer. Because it's so easy for you to want to complain and be like, my life sucks. I can't believe I have to be stuck on a machine for three days a week and wait to see if someone will come and offer me a kidney and all of these different things. And do you ask people to give you a kidney? Or do you see if someone sees the situation you're in and says, hey, I want to offer you a kidney, but you can't focus on that being the total end all be all because I am here to serve humanity. 

And so I still have to wake up every day with my buffet tray of all these amazing tools and gifts and wisdoms and offer it to the world and see those who want it and those who don't and still love them unconditionally while suffering, while going through pain every day, while throwing up and shaking and getting pain in your body and constipations and, oh, the things I go through, but still keep my mind and my spirit on God and on the light and on being of service, but not from a place of I told you so, or holier than thou, or I'm better than you. None of those hierarchies, but just showing up as brothers and sisters. I'm your brother. You're my sister. You're my brother. I'm not better than you. I'm just here to share with you. And if you take information that I have to share, that's your choice. I love you, and if you don't take it, I love you, and if you hate me, I love you, and if you choose to spit in my face, I love you, and let's continue moving where we can, and if any of this information does change the world, then great, but I don't have a mission. I don't have a purpose. I'm not here to fall into those matrix programmings. I'm here to hold space for humanity. What is possible with humanity, and at the same time, discover and remember more from my brothers and sisters stories and the things they share with me, and sharing with them and being creative and having a beautiful connection in understanding how to alchemize darkness into light. And that's why I'm here. And that's what that death ceremony taught me.

[00:51:19] LW: I went to understanding long time to ago in Melrose and I got a book... 

[00:51:26] SD: I love Bodhi Tree.

[00:51:27] LW: Yeah, the old days, right? Right across Elixir. I'm sure you spent many, many hours in Elixir having tea.

[00:51:34] SD: I was. Yes, I was. 

[00:51:38] LW: Anyway,

[00:51:38] SD: And the Orasoma, Orasoma. Don't forget Orasoma was right across the street as well. 

[00:51:42] LW: Right, right, right. I was in the occult section of Bodhi Tree one day and I was. just looking at the books because I would go in there and spend hours in Bodhi Tree. This was the neighborhood spiritual bookstore in L. A. And I got this book called Journey of Souls, by Michael Newton. It talks about the literal journey of what happens from the moment your body drops to the moment you incarnate in a new body. And I was like, this is fantastic. It resonates. It rings true. Although I haven't had a near death experience. This is what I really feel could happen. And a part of that experience is the life review where you go back and you replay all of the different scenarios and the situations and the arguments and the, this and that, and you look at it from both sides.

So I would like for you to just talk a little more about that since you've actually had that experience. And how does that inform, because I know you just hinted at it now, but I'm thinking for the listener who could be just ignorant of how this whole thing really works. How could that inform one as they're hearing this conversation and then moving on into the rest of their life from here? What wisdom can they take from knowing that that is a possible experience that one could have? 

[00:53:05] SD: So, you know, I look at the life in review not as a form of punishment or a form of look at what you did because a lot of times people like to stay in that very dualistic place of you know, what is right and what is wrong. But in the universe, we look at things very differently in the sense of the non judgment factor, which is that you're an eternal being. Everything is eternal. So even a flower dying is eternal. It's just going to take another form in another dimension, right? And so everything you see that leaves our world, even if someone is murdered right, they're eternal. So they're going to just take another form in another world. So those spirits don't put emphasis on the way that humans do when it comes to attachment. So the understanding of seeing the life in review is more about how you weave energy into this universe as a creator. So the characteristic of the energy that you weave is the energy that you weave for the expansion of the universe, or is the energy that you weave to shadow the universe with fear and lack and limitation and all these different things and why you chose to make those choices as a creator. Because if you don't know as a creator, how you are creating, because you think like, I'll give you a perfect example. Here's a perfect example of a thing that human beings aren't fully aware of. Okay? 

So let's say for instance, there's a war. Okay. And everyone, let's say 10, 000 people, I'll just give that number, 10, 000 people choose to look at that and go, oh my God, we're in war. Okay. In that moment, those people are now serving the darkness because the reason why is, is because the moment you react or take consciousness of something and give it presedence or give it acknowledgement to the point where you can generate energy from it, then you are then buying into it. And when you buy into it, that means you are giving up your creative energy force for that what you believe. That's why when friends come to you and say, oh, I'm running low on money. Like If someone comes to me, I'll give you a perfect example. Someone comes to me and says, Shaman Durek money's really hard for me. I don't even react to that nonsense. I go, no, it's not. You're so powerful and prosperous. You have so much money coming your way right now. I see great opportunity showing up for you. Why? Because what they're trying to do is to get me to co validate their experience. And by co validating someone's experience, I am now lending my creative energy to your lack of scarcity and I'm just not going to do that. a being of the light and I serve the light. And as I serve the light, it is only for me to dream greater than that which I see. 

So when I see a war, I go, okay, human beings have chosen a war. Okay. They want to play that out. Fine. Go and see a planet that is without war. And I keep my energy going there. And then what I do is I share that wisdom with others to see if they want to put their energy onto this. It's kind of like, I want to invest in this. Do you want to invest in a new world where there's no war? Do you want to invest into a world where cancer is no longer a word that comes out of people's mouths? Do you want to invest in a world where there's no more racism? Because that's where I'm going to put my creative energy. Not, oh my God, do you see what's happening? Oh my God, the world is falling apart, you're serving the darkness. The darkness is all about making things trapped in dimensions. The light is about moving dimensional frequencies into one another. That means that the multi dimensional expressions of Earth that exist, we continually shuffle through those different expressions as we make choices in our life. And so when we talk about the reviewing, we realize that the review is an opportunity for us to go oh, so that is what caused me to put my energy there. Now I understand. So now when I go back to earth, I am going to choose. parents that create a different experience so that I'm going to practice the art of utilizing my power as a creator to put my energy here.

And you see the greatest gift we get by coming to earth, which so many beings want to come here is because we're gods in training. So we're learning how to use our energy and where we place our energy to the point where we evolved to a point where we realize that the only place we ever want to place our energy is in creation for the sake of love, for the delight in love. And therefore we then move into a fifth dimensional field.

But a lot of people have this books out there. They talk about ascension and this and everyone thinks well, if I do really good and I'm super spiritual and I'm of the light and I'm loving light and I'm all these things ascend, that's not what ascension is. Ascension is the ability to transform darkness into light consciously and lift the by frequency to a higher dimensional field. That means there's no duality. I don't talk to a dark being like religious people do where they're like down Satan, be done with you because they're my brothers and sisters. Why would I talk to them like that? I go, sweetheart. Tell me what's going on. 

So when you were living, you murdered someone. Okay. And when you died um, you decided when you got your, when you saw everything that you did and where you put your energy, you decided that you didn't feel worthy enough to go home into the light. I get it. So you chose to go into the underworld and you've been looking for souls that would merge with you. so that you can learn through them. And then if they wake up and see the potential, then they'll take you with them to the light and ascend. Okay, well, I'm here to support you. How can I support you? That's how I talk to them. 

[00:58:55] LW: I'm sure that you've been accused of spiritual bypassing and just triggering the hell out of people with all these kinds of perspectives. But I always have said everything, this is my own personal belief, but everything is a belief system. Everything that we think, everything that we do is rooted in some sort of ideology or religion. And we have the option to choose which belief system we want to adopt. And I say, choose the one that empowers you the most.

[00:59:25] SD: I agree. And that's very shamanic.

[00:59:27] LW: Yeah. Whichever one empowers you the most choose that one. There's no such thing as, Oh, I'm not religious or I don't, you know, no one is my guru. You're influenced by somebody. Your actions are influenced by somebody. So you may as well choose consciously. Okay. These are the options on the table.

One is I can be afraid. 

The other one is I can see my own light in the power of my own light and dispel the darkness with, by shining that light through my words, my thoughts and my actions and just play it out and see which one makes you feel like the best version of you over a period of time. right? Not just one incident, but over a period of time. 

[01:00:09] SD: Yeah, that's what we say when we say where you breathe the easiest, which dimension do you breathe the easiest in? Like for me, I'm inspired by Jesus Christ. I think it's absolutely amazing how you can go through so much human pain and have people spit in your face, laugh at you, you know, try to persecute you and you still love. That is what I live my life wanting to be. I'm also absolutely inspired by Buddha, who was Lord Siddhartha, who became the Gautama Buddha when he recognized to separate himself from the idea of duality and into full acceptance of all things. To me, that's beautiful. I'm also inspired by Lord Krishna, you know, because I believe in a lot, and I read the Bhagavad Gita when I was young. And I was very inspired by the amount of devotion and love. And I'm also, appreciate Muslim culture with devotion, the teachings of Alive, the teachings of Fatima, the teachings of Mohammed, the understanding of family, the understanding of truly holding that energy of loyalty and all of these things. And I also enjoy witchcraft. I think the, not wicca because that's more watered down witchcraft, but real witchcraft, which is you have a choice. You have a choice of how you're going to use your energy. You're going to have a choice of if the moon or sun affects you, what type of elements or how elements are affecting us and how elements play a huge part in our life.

And also shamanism, which is the idea that you have to have a relationship with everything. Now it matters what kind of relationship you have, because that's the core of shamanism; relationship to food, relationship to your ancestors, relationship to spirit, relationship to yourself, relationship to people, relationship to trees, relationship to flowers. Relationship. What is your relationship? And the bigger, the grander, more authentic and loving your relationship is the more powers you gain as a shaman. And so again, being able to look at all of these different things and even Zoroastrian old culture of Zoroastrian Persian knowledge and ancient Persian, Persian magic. It's beautiful, but again, what it matters is, are we using the knowledge, our emotional intelligence? Our mental acuity, our ability to have a choice of yes and no in the universal field of intelligence of what we choose to say this is where I'm going to place my power source. This is where I'm going to place my power source and choosing those things and watching how your energy is affecting the greater world by where you choose to place your power source. 

[01:02:55] LW: You mentioned that spiritual shamans are rare these days on the planet, but they may be thinking, well, I want to go study with the shaman, or I want to have a session with the shaman. The fact that it's rare does not keep people from self designating themselves as a shaman. So how can one know if this person who's saying they are a shaman is someone who's maybe, you know, a good fit for them. And number two, I know a lot of times shamans are associated with ayahuasca ceremonies, which is also really popular. And you have A very interesting perspective on that medicine. 

[01:03:32] SD: A shaman. Okay. Yeah. So just to be clear for you, my love, a person who administers ayahuasca doesn't mean that they're a shaman. They could be an ayahuasca daro. So an ayahuasca daro is different from a shaman. A shaman is someone who understands the spiritual world, okay and how these things relate and ayahuasca daro is someone who administers ayahuasca for ceremonies and is trained in the art of the ayahuasca the potency, how to make it and how to facilitate it and how to hold ceremonies. A lot of people who are ayahuasca daros are confusing themselves with shamans. I've met people who are ayahuasca daros and I asked them about the spirit world or do they talk to the spirits and whatnot, and they have no clue how to access those energies at all. 

[01:04:19] LW: They would be an earth shaman though, right? If they're working with ayahuasca. 

[01:04:23] SD: They don't even have dream visions. They could be an earth shaman if they're working with other plants. So ayahuasca daro is one who just works with ayahuasca. An earth shaman is someone who works with all levels of earth shamanism. 

[01:04:38] LW: Interesting. Okay. So then how does one recognize even an ayahuasca daro? Like, is this person legit or are they just riding away? 

[01:04:46] SD: You ask them questions. you say, do you speak to spirits? Do you have dream visions? Do you speak to the council of elders? These are very important questions to ask because if an ayahuasca daro can't speak to spirits, or can't see spirits, and when you're in ceremony with them, and they can't tell if you're being possessed by a spirit because when you take ayahuasca, you're opening your vessel to the spirit world. And if you have a person who's not trained in knowledge of how to hold space, we call it sacred space. Then you get what are called creepers. 

Creepers are spirits that come in wait for human beings to be weak in their energy field and then dive into them. And then all of a sudden you're acting like a different person. I had a client situation where this woman. All of a sudden started dating women after her ayahuasca ceremony and she was getting married to this man and called off the wedding. And when her sister sent her in to see me, it was because there was a male spirit that jumped into her body and didn't feel comfortable marrying a man and so wanted to be with a woman. And when we got the spirit out, she was like, I'm not attracted to women. I want to be with my husband. 

So again, it depends. And some people will, some shamans, you have to also ask them questions like, do you have an integrative period after I do the medicine? Because if earth shamans don't have an integrative period and they just give you medicine and send you back to this world that's dangerous. Or do you have someone I can go see who's going to help me integrate? Because if everything in the spirit world is about building the relationship from the physical to the spiritual, and it's a relationship of harmony, not a relationship of intensities. The intensities come because you're not integrating properly, you're going into a very deep shamanic experience in the jungle or whoever you're with, where you're doing the medicine, and then you're going to your job in your office at Wall Street. That's crazy. 

[01:06:37] LW: Is that what you mean by people aren't using plant medicine the right way? 

[01:06:41] SD: They're not using plant medicine in the right way because they're not allowing time for integration before they go back to their to the mundane matrixy lifestyle and they're not utilizing the knowledge of what Aya is showing them. They think that when I shows them images, these are things they have to dive into. Aya is showing you what needs to be closed. What needs to be like bye bye. I send you off with love. 

The biggest reason why human beings go through what we call suffering when people talk about, they have trauma. Trauma means to a shaman that you are repeatedly going back in the past, traveling back to your painful experience and re identifying it spiritually in your body, your cells, your subconscious, your unconscious, your nervous system, your parasympathetic nervous system does not know the difference of time.

Time is a created, generalized thing set up to create structure. Your body does not live in that structure. So when you go back to a memory, like when a woman says to me, I want a new relationship with a man who loves me, but she keeps focusing on her narcissistic boyfriend of the past, your being is feeling the attack again. And that's why people get sick with high levels of inflammation that leads to cancer and fibromyalgia and brain issues, mental health issues, mental decline, all kinds of situations, because you're imagine if I put you in a cage with a lion, for two years. And I keep telling you this, the lion can eat you today. This lion can eat you today. And you're constantly receiving the continuous fear on you. Your cells would break down. Your cellular wall would break down, leading you susceptible to viruses and organisms that would hurt your system, your brain and neurological system would set, start shutting down, leading you to Alzheimer's and dementia and all kinds of things, and the inflammation in your organs would be so much. You might even just lose an organ. 

[01:08:37] LW: Yeah, you know this and you've said stuff like this before, and it's a lot of it is very controversial. I guess what you're ultimately saying, though, is that we have to take responsibility for our experience. And that it's not just what's happening externally, but also what's happening internally is impacting the quality of our experience? Is that what you mean by, you know, reclaiming your personal power, like being fully in your experience? 

[01:09:04] SD: Absolutely. Reclaiming your personal power is about you coming into your own sovereignty, you connecting with your counsel, you aligning and connecting with your mind, asking your mind, Hey, mind, what's going on? Do you need anything from me? Emotions? How do you feel? A body. What do you need from me? Inner child, which Is your soul? What do you need from me? Spirit guides. Is there anything I can do to continue supporting my evolution? And ancestors? What is your counsel for me now that you see everything outside of being in that human experience as a family member? All of this is your embodiment, right?

And so when we say in shamanism, what is your embodiment? Your embodiment are the many levels of spirit that you are, that is there for you to integrate and connect with at all times. So when I say being in your power, it means that you have an awareness of yourself and awareness that you are loved. So when a spirit from the underworld comes and says, you're an idiot, or you're never going to get that job, or you're not smart enough, or you need to lose weight, or you're going to run out of money or any of these things, you know, the difference you go, aha, well, I know you're not me because I'm a being of love because that's how I was created. So you're trying to convince me of this and then you realize, well, that's not necessary. So I'm going to help you ascend into the light because I am not going to listen to anything outside of me that is not holding the reflective love quality of my being. So when I say to you, Light, you are a powerful, wise man. You have a heart of gold. You're always listening behind the lines of what people say. You like to go to the truth of things. You have such a perspective on life that allows you to see and want to travel and learn and experience and remember from different people's cultures. You love differences. You love how different people think about things, and that makes you a powerful being. The reason why I'm able to say that to you is because in my sovereignty, I am able to allow God to speak through me to you. 

And if I say to myself, Shaman Durek you're such a loving soul who constantly holds space for people. That's God speaking through me, to me. So that means we say in shamanism, it is the voice of spirit that speaks to you.

Now, if someone said to you something completely obscure, I mean completely different than what I would say, like, in a very negative way, they're not talking about you. 

[01:11:35] LW: You're greedy, you're selfish. You're a narcissist, you're a toxic. 

[01:11:38] SD: They're talking about themselves, judgment of themselves, and they're needing someone to project it onto so that they can claim responsibility for it. This is why I said to my father, when he was beating me, I said, I know why you beat me. And he goes, why? I said, because you have not made resolve with the beatings you got from grandfather. So you are still unable to accept that that happened. So now you're sharing your story with me. Okay, but the story stops here. 

[01:12:08] LW: You gonna stop beating me first? Then we're gonna talk about your story. 

[01:12:12] SD: Because the story stops here, you can beat me because that's how you feel you need to express what happened to you. But I'm not going to beat my kids. And my sister is not going to beat her kids, because we're not going to pass on the poison because we acknowledge that abuse sucks. And so people who don't acknowledge it, transfer it over. It's called ancestral curses, right? But you don't have to accept an ancestral curse. 

And oh, the new age community, sometimes I have to be like, okay, well, that's what you guys choose to think. Because new age community believes that they have to fix all their ancestors stuff. And that's not true either. You burn a candle, you say, ancestors, get down here and clean up your mess. And they'll do it. They're not trying to make you suffer through the things they want through, but you activate those things when you let them be holding of you. So being in your power is not having people have dominion over you. Like what's my dad used to say to me, I'm your father and you'll listen to me and reason why you're going to... I would say to him, well, how do I know that your knowledge is actually in alignment to God's highest light? And he go, what did you say, boy? I'm your father and you're gonna listen to me when you're under this roof.

I said, okay, so let me get this straight, dad. And that was a challenge for him. And he laughed on his deathbed because he laughed so hard of what a challenge I was for him. And I said, dad, let me explain something to you. Because you use this thing, I'm your father as this dominion that you have over me. I'm not going to call you father anymore. I'm going to call you David. And the fact that you continuously talk about me being under your roof as a guise to your power, I'm moving out just so you can understand that no one will have dominion over me. And if I'm in a relationship with someone, which I have been where people have been in my relationship would try to tell me you're going to do this and you're going to do this and you're not going to drum in the morning and you're not going to talk to spirits anymore because it's driving me crazy and whatever. We got to go. Because if I feel like you're trying to take dominion over me, that means you're not aware of your own sovereignty, which means that you're going to try to control my sovereignty. No one will control my sovereignty. My relationship is directly channeled with God, which is, if I say, God, do you love me? I hear, of course I do. God, have you ever judged me? Never. God, are you proud of what I'm doing? Always. I'm fine. I don't need your accolades. If you want to say something nasty to me, like when the press writes nasty things, I go, okay, well, you know, that's what you guys choose to believe. I love you still. I just don't agree. I think it's ridiculous what you're saying, but that is what it is. And that helps you in the beginning. I wasn't acting that way in the beginning. I was like, oh my God, how could they do this to me? And then spirit came to me and said, of course, they're doing it to you because they have to. And this is a great opportunity for you to show love. So get into your love boots and put on your love jacket and let's go out there and show love. So now you people calling me the N word and you don't belong in the royal family and we don't want a person of your color and I just go, I love you. I'm sorry you feel that way and move it along. Let's move it along. 

[01:15:08] LW: The author of The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho, he was committed to an insane asylum three times by his parents because he would not acquiesce to their demands of him becoming a lawyer or some other kind of matrix-y, conventional type of job. And he said, he obviously, he didn't enjoy the experience, but he said when he got out of the insane asylum the third time, he found it so liberating because everyone thought he was completely nuts and he's like, I could do whatever I want now because I could always blame it on that. 

[01:15:43] SD: Yeah, it's true. I'm crazy. 

[01:15:47] LW: And I feel like you've gone through the same sort of right of passage, you know, where you've had so many people saying so many things you just, you can't care what they think anymore. And that's so liberating. Thank God. Thank God you end that that position.

[01:16:03] SD: It's liberating. I always make jokes about it. I'm like, oh, so tomorrow I should say I'm a unicorn incarnated as Shaman Durek because that's what they're going to say anyway. They say everything, anything. The press writes the most craziest things about me that I have never read about. Like, I've never thought that it's just become so ludicrous that. I'm at the point where now I just don't care anymore. 

[01:16:25] LW: You mentioned earlier that you'd like to play video games. I know that you also like to play with action figures. What's something else that would surprise people about Shaman Durek?

[01:16:35] SD: That I have a sticker book and my friends give me stickers to fill into my sticker book and I make my sticker book all nice and fun and with cool pictures and stuff. And let's see what else do I... Live in kind of a Disney world like I sing to the birds and I sing to the birds and people, I like go like good morning, beautiful birds. How are you today? Oh, the grass looks lovely. It's shining a perfect way. How I love the sky. Beautiful sky. You are like, I'm always singing to things. I'm always talking to animals. I live in, I'm kind of like a mixture between Cinderella and me, it's because I live in a world, I see magic all around me, you know. Like when I open a door, I'm like, I'm opening the door to possibilities, you know, and then my friends start laughing, because that's how my brain works, you know, I'm like, you know, my friend starts a car and I'm like, say out loud, I'm igniting my passions. 

I see magic in everything and I think, I've always been that way since I was a kid. My sister always makes jokes about it, but she always goes like, oh yeah, you're always taking homeless people off the street and cleaning them and dressing them and getting them jobs. And you're always waking up in the morning my girlfriends are spending a night and you're standing on the fence, crowing to the crows and the ravens. And I've always been that kind of person. And what I love about my life and what I love about my fiance is she is the same way and she delights in those things with me like when we first met, we started playing video games together and she's like, I'm so happy you love playing video games, you know, and I'm like a princess that plays video games, oh my God, this is awesome. And then like we love Disneyland. We love Star Wars. She named her daughter off of Princess Leia in Star Wars. So I love Star Wars too. So we're huge Star Wars fan. So we go in with our VR and we go into Star Wars games and play together, you know, so yeah. Awesome. yeah. And I love my sticker book. I love stickers. I love painting. I love coloring and color books. I'm a kid. I love setting up forts with my fiance and we play action figures and we give the different characters and we do different scenarios. Like we have to find the sacred orb before the sun goes down at this time of the Galligan festival, you know, and then the one character goes, but the only way we're going to do that if we find the wizard Severian, so let's go find him and then we go through, we find him. 

And what it does for me, it keeps my creativity and my imagination of what is possible alive, but it also allows me to see different energies in different dimensions. 

[01:19:27] LW: Yeah. And I don't want people to hear this and go, that's all you are very much a dude and you're a stepdad to your fiance's kids and... 

[01:19:38] SD: We say bonus father. because it's a bonus to be a father. 

[01:19:42] LW: A bonus father. 

I love that. 

[01:19:47] SD: Yeah, I'm a bonus dad. They're my bonus kids. 

[01:19:51] LW: Yeah. And you're prolific in your work. I mean, you've worked with a lot of really high profile people and you've been on television and all these things. And you can't really do all of that and show up like that and be as materially successful as you are if you weren't also very responsible, very responsive, and you're a good judge of character and you know, and all the things that, that make you a productive citizen of the world as well. So it's really wonderful to see these different aspects, and I'm glad that you were open enough to sharing those during this interview and with my audience. 

[01:20:24] SD: Absolutely. It's an honor. Thank You for believing in me to even share myself to your audience and to be here to open up. You know, people always say you shouldn't talk about your things that you want to. You shouldn't talk about that. And I'm like, why not? Why not? And that's what I love about you is when I saw you last time, you were like, yeah, I want to bring you on the podcast because we need to get down into like we got to go in it. And I started laughing in my head. I was like, those are the best podcasts that I like going on. I can't stand superficial nonsense, you know, because I really think that it's important for us to open up the spectrum so that people feel that they're not alone, that they also have gone through these things and there is a way through and there is a way to create a beautiful life for yourself after going through so much turmoil and so much suffering. And I think that's important for us to always hold the light and shine that into the world instead of shining always the victimhood and lack of limitation. 

Even just me marrying into the royal family, everyone was waiting for me to go and complain, like press was reaching out to me going like, you know, do you want to say to tell the truth and all of this kind of stuff? And I said, absolutely not. Even if I'm having problems at home with my family and my in laws, I would never share it with the world as a way to make it this like airing dirty laundry because for me, every experience is an opportunity to show love, every experience is an opportunity to give compassion, every opportunity is an opportunity to to understand how to share things that empower people and delight them in being a human being, not make them look for something else to not like or something else to be judgmental about. That's not serving humanity. And they can call me a spiritual bypasser all they want. They don't even know what it means. It's just a made up new age word that they formulated

[01:22:14] LW: Well, look, man, your book, Spirit Hacking: Shamanic Keys to Reclaim Your Personal Power, Transform Yourself and Light Up the World. I came to your book launch party. For people who are listening to this, I personally believe that everybody has abilities and you know, this kind of thing. What's something that people can do now? Obviously, getting your book is one step, but what's something that what's a practice that we can do to kind of cultivate more of that in our life so that we can feel as connected as someone like you may feel? 

[01:22:42] SD: You have the ability to tap into these energies. You just have to play with it more. You have to have more fun. You have to be a kid more. Just be more playful and kid like, be like, you know what, I'm gonna see like, what is this tree feel like right now, body, show me what this tree feels like right now. Like, this is how you start connecting with the outer world. You start playing with energy. I call it playing with energy and people go on my newsletter. I have this one section on my newsletter. It's called playing with energy, And every week I give people new things to play with energy. Because when you play with energy, you're not making it so like this is this and this is this, but more like I get to be a kid and play with the river. I get to see like what kind of offering the river wants me to bring today. I get to remember what it was like to be a kid and see the world is magical. And the more you do that, the stronger you're going to feel because your relationship to those things are going to get stronger and stronger and stronger. And that's going to open you up to even more levels of the spiritual world, right? 

I think that the most challenging thing I think for human beings is to get out of the seriousness of things. And start remembering what it was like to be the kid. I remember I was talking to this friend of mine who's a CEO, and he goes, Durek when you said that to me, I pulled out my old skateboard and started skateboarding down the street, and I couldn't believe, I started laughing and going, why did I put this up in my garage? You know, it's like, when we start remembering that, there's an old biblical saying, which I love. It's in Matthews, and they asked Jesus, Jesus, how does one enter the kingdom of heaven? And when I think of heaven, I think of the state of consciousness, right? And Jesus said, to tell you the truth, in order to enter the kingdom of heaven, one must come as a child. And that's how he left it. And so everything in consciousness, to reach heaven, heaven is a state of consciousness that we pull into being through our consciousness, through our, our energies, and then begin to see it, live it and feel it and experience it as real as according to us. What is your heaven on earth? What is that child in you that's going to bring that heaven on earth if you let that child come out and be a part of your experience. And that's where I always say people for them to start is to like, look across the room and go, if I touch that curtain, what would it feel like right now if I touched it in my spirit hand and then go and touch it with your physical and see if they match that build your intuition that builds your psychic abilities.

Can you hear the sound of a baby crying? Can you hear the sound of a train? Can you hear the sound of conductor talking to someone who's getting on the train while a woman is talking to her husband and saying goodbye at the same time. You play with all these different realities and what happens is all of a sudden you're walking somewhere and you hear a spirit speak to you because now you learn how to listen. And then you all of a sudden you don't have to walk into a room and go you actually can feel the energy of the room because you've been playing games with looking at everything around you and seeing how it feels.

So, you know, these are delightful experiences, visualize a table. I have my remembrance students visualize a table and on the table, there's flowers and then see how long you can meditate staring at that table and see if someone comes into the room. Does the scenery change? Is the person who comes in do they notice that you're watching in the room? Because a lot of times that teaches people how to remote view and how to be able to use their psychic abilities and how to be able to travel the spirit world to be called what we call a spiritual navigator, because you can meditate, but you can meditate and there's so many different forms of meditation out there, right? But the ones that I like for people to do is where they learn how to look at a tree. See the tree and then see if an animal comes by or something and then the world opens up to you when you start venturing into it, you might meet a wise soul who once lived on earth who gives you knowledge like. This is what Edgar Cayce did. He would use these dreams and these ways to travel and meet spirits and then find the cures for diseases and sicknesses and come back and administrate them. So there's so much play that needs to be had and that's where I'm going to say, you know, even like with the things that I have available that everything that I offer in what I do is like products and everything are all there to bring you to a place of play and childlike expression. And I think that's the most important thing that people should start if they really want to open up their abilities. 

[01:27:17] LW: I love it. I love it. And I love you. And thank you again for joining and being so generous in your share. And I look forward to seeing you again in person and getting one of your warm embraces. 

[01:27:30] SD: Yes. And people can, you know, they can also... just give you a, just do a little plug. 

[01:27:34] LW: Please. Yeah. Where can people find you? 

[01:27:36] SD: They can get the Spirit Hacking book. They can go to shamandurek.com. We also have a, I just launched a new meditation app that's blowing people's minds where it's activated frequencies of shamanic energies that open up your powers in your body. There's a community board where people can share and talk about the things they're doing and get people into what they're doing.

[01:27:54] LW: What's it called? The app? 

[01:27:55] SD: The app is called the Lit Vibe Meditation. 

[01:27:57] LW: The Lit Vibe. Nice. 

[01:28:00] SD: Find your vibe. Find your vibe. 

[01:28:03] LW: And you're prolific on social media as well. You're always going live. You're always helping people live on... 

[01:28:10] SD: Live. Yeah, live Tuesday. We do live healings on tuesday on social media and talks and things of that every Tuesday. And most importantly, the thing is I'm here to hold space for people's power and intelligence And to show them that they're so magnificent and that's it. And so if people, you know, feel they want to take from my buffet tray and they would like to have some of the things on my buffet tray that I offer, I'm here to support them. 

[END]

Thank you for tuning into my interview with Shaman Durek. To get more information about Shaman Durek, I suggest following him on social media. You can find him at Shaman Durek, which is spelled D U R E K. And his book is again, Spirit Hacking. It's available everywhere books are sold. And of course, we'll put links to everything that Shaman Durek and I discussed in the show notes, which you can find at lightwatkins.com/podcast. 

If you enjoyed this conversation, you found it inspiring and you're now thinking to yourself. I'd love to hear Light interview someone like Richard Branson or Oprah Winfrey or somebody like that, shoot me an email with your guest suggestions. My email is light@lightwatkins.com. 

And in addition to that, one very simple way that you can help me get that guest on my show, especially if it's a really high profile guest is to leave a review for the show. That's one of the reasons why you always hear podcast hosts like me asking listeners like you to rate and review the shows, because that's how a lot of these higher profile guests gauge whether or not they are going to come on to someone's show based on how much engagement they're getting from the audience. It only takes 10 seconds. It's not going to cost you anything. And all you do is you look at your screen, you click on the name of the show, you scroll down past those first handful of episodes, and you'll see a space with five blank stars. Just click the star, just tap the star all the way on the right, that's all you have to do to leave a five star rating. And if you want to go the extra mile, you can leave a review right underneath that. Just write one simple line about what you find inspiring about this podcast. That's it. It goes such a long way. You have no idea when it comes to getting guests on the show. So thank you very much for that. 

Don't forget. You can also watch these interviews on my YouTube channel. If you ever want to put a face to a story, just go to YouTube and search Light Watkins Podcast and make sure you subscribe there as well.

And if you didn't already know, I post the raw unedited audio version of each podcast in my happiness insiders online community. So if you want to hear the mistakes and the false starts and hear what Shaman Durek and I chit chatted about before the episode officially started, you can listen to all that by joining my online community at thehappiness.com. All you do is you sign up for a masterclass or a challenge that appeals to you. And not only will you be able to hear those unedited episodes, you'll also be able to do some inner work in the process and become the best version of yourself.

And in the meantime, I look forward to hopefully seeing you back here next week with another story about someone just like me, just like you taking a leap of faith in the direction of their purpose. And until then, keep trusting your intuition, keep following your heart and keep taking those leaps of faith. And if no one's told you recently that they believe in you, I believe in you. So you got me in your corner. Alright, thank you so much. Sending you lots of love and have a great day.