"I am the master of my fate: I am the captain of my soul."
* from Invictus by William Ernest Henley

In the current state of spiritual awakening, we encounter a variety of approaches to achieving self-realization and empowerment. There seem to be many options, and you may find yourself moving from one alternative to another; you may even feel a sense of incompleteness and fragmentation in your spiritual life.

In the emerging age of new awareness, the one significant quality of transcendence is a new understanding of the wholeness of all things — the oneness of the universe. The fragmentation we feel in our spiritual practice is in conflict with this basic principle, but the sense of divisiveness is the fault of our thinking, not the condition that actually exists.

I have found that shamanism offers a unifying approach that encompasses all of the various practices in its understanding that all of the universe is one entity and that our outdated mechanistic view of fragmented parts is an artificial construct developed in humankind's effort to control its universe rather than to become a part of it.