I'm jealous of everyone who comes up with clever titles.

Shamans can control the spirits...This statement kind of freaks me out. When I think of spirits, I think of Oujia boards and the Disney show from the late 90's, So Weird--which by the way, scared the crap out of me as a kid. I think of ghosts haunting people and I think of my old college roommate who insisted the blurry circles that show up on some pictures are "orbs", which she defined as a spirit being caught on film. I asked her how she defined a spirit, because if random ghosts or, God forbid, God is showing up in my drunken pictures, that's not cool. I don't remember what she said, but now when I see an "orb" in a picture, I think it may be my grandfather or my friend who died when she was 15. Sometimes I think it may be my friend's sister who died when she was 13. But I also don't really believe that blurry circles in pictures are captured spirits. It is nice to think that my friend is there with all of us when we come home from college and that my grandfather is at my graduation and Christmas, but are they really? And if they actually are present, is that good? Shouldn't they be living it up in the afterlife rather than watching over us? Selfishly, we want our passed loved ones to be watching over us, but I don't want them to be missing me or wishing they were still here. Sorry, long ramble totally unrelated to shamanism. But basically, controlling spirits seems like scary and intense terrain, although calling them helping spirits makes it a little less scary.

Just a quick note of skepticism: If shamans "can create meaningful patterns from unclear data, organizing ambiguous experiences into coherent, meaningful images" that reflect their culture and beliefs, who says they're not just creative?

A profound statement from the Walsh reading caught my attention. "Unfortunately, most people take extreme positions." What Walsh is referring to is people's beliefs in shamans and spirit guides, but isn't it true of life? If people weren't so extreme, there would be no wars, no battles, no fights. Of course, everyone is entitled to their views, however moderate or extreme, but I firmly and extremely believe we should treat one another with respect and at least listen to them, no matter how much we may disagree.

Lillian had chronic pelvic pain which was healed by having a dream in which she was gang-raped and murdered, but when she woke up, she was healed of the pain. Interesting. Would it be wrong, if faced with the same situation, I might choose Vicodin over Wildwood?

I think dreams are fascinating and I wish there was an exact science to know exactly what they mean. My dreams are always so weird and I can never find words to explain them, so when I tell a story about my dreams, people often rudely and loudly groan. It always ends up something like this: "My dog wasn't actually a dog. He was like CatDog, but only one person and he didn't roll around. He was like half dog, but half other animal, but not really, just a little bit. And we were at this place that was like school, but it wasn't school. It sort of felt like school, but we were outside, and it definitely wasn't school..." There should be a separate language for dreams. I desperately need it.

When reading about the out of body experiences, my initial reaction was that I wanted to have one, but then my mind regressed to So Weird. There was this episode where this girl kept leaving her body but each time it got harder for her to get back to her body until eventually she couldn't get back into it. OBE, no thanks.

I think I've had Eureka! moments with writing. Sometimes things just come to me and I know that's my poem or my story or whatever. Sometimes I get the beginning, middle, and end at different times and others I get it all at once.