Sacred Medicine And Dreams With Amanda Elo'Esh

In my latest episode of Women's Dream Enlightenment, I delve into the enchanting worlds of dream decoding, spiritual discovery, and the pursuit of enlightenment together with my special guest, Amanda Elo’Esh. Amanda is an esteemed sacred medicine facilitator, and her extensive expertise in counseling psychology and expressive arts therapy has greatly enriched our conversation. Her profound journey, marked by experiences with indigenous wisdom lineages and subconscious success re-patterning, offers invaluable insights for those of us seeking to live authentically, free from trauma and limitations.

Transcript

You're listening to Women's Dream Enlightenment.

Dream decoding,

Deep discussions,

And spiritual stories of self-discovery to inspire your personal enlightened journey.

I'm your host,

Megan Mary,

Founder of Women's Dream Analysis.

Let's bring in the light.

Welcome!

Today we have Amanda Eloish.

She is a world-class sacred medicine facilitator educated in counseling psychology and expressive arts therapy.

She has been initiated in multiple indigenous wisdom lineages and weaves meditation,

Channeling,

Breathwork,

And movement practices.

Her unique approach is subconscious success repatterning,

Which liberates trauma and limiting beliefs so that you can live your life's purpose authentically free from shame and limitations.

Welcome,

Amanda.

Thank you so much.

So good to be here,

Megan Mary.

Yes,

I love the work that you do out in the world.

It's so unique.

Your take on it is always going to be another layer to all of my other guests that have been on here.

So I'm excited for our conversation today.

And I want to start it out with a question that I ask everybody first,

Which is,

What does enlightenment mean to you?

Well,

I had this really come through powerfully a couple of years ago,

And it was during a meditation where I really experienced everything in its as perfect,

The wholeness of everything.

If I could do this all the time,

This would be enlightenment.

And it was like,

Oh,

Well,

If you simplify it,

It's really being able to not just trust,

Not just a mental affirmation,

But an actual embodiment,

An actual felt sense that everything is perfect and being able to really feel that and live that.

The perfection of all things.

I like that.

I'm always surprised by everybody's answer because everybody's answer is so unique and so true yet in its own right.

So yeah,

Thank you for that.

So I want to give you a chance to tell your story of spiritual awakening,

How you came to do the work that you're doing and what happened along the way.

Oh,

My God.

How long do you have?

And it could be a summarized version.

Many times there is a process that kind of has a little bit of a template to it,

It seems like.

And it's always interesting to hear what leads us down that path and then where we end up once we get on it.

Yeah,

I will say that it's been an unfolding path since I was very young.

My first memory actually is from above choosing my birth family.

And I've had kind of access to these multi-dimensional,

The quantum field,

The Samadhi experiences throughout my life.

A lot of people that have the healing journey,

They have this big awakening moment where it's like,

Oh,

My gosh,

There's more than this 3D reality.

There's more.

And I've kind of always known that.

It's more been like,

What do I do as a human?

What am I supposed to be doing here as a human?

And what things that I know about my divine and infinite self can I bridge to the human experience?

Because I was born in the early 70s into a Mormon family.

So there wasn't,

You know,

New agey stuff was happening,

But it wasn't happening in my neck of the woods.

Meditation wasn't being talked about.

It was like obedience and your spiritual survival depends on believing and following these specific rules.

And my lived reality wasn't fitting into it.

So really what's happened is I've followed spiritual breadcrumbs.

There are some that are more significant than others.

And then gone through,

I'd say the biggest things were going through what a lot of people would refer to as the shamanic death,

Where it's like health,

Relationship,

Finances,

Living situations,

Everything.

I call it Kali Etch-a-Sketch,

Where your life gets shaken and like complete wipe out and turned to a blank slate again.

I love that.

That's happened multiple times to me.

And right at the beginning of the first really big one,

I got this strong download,

This strong message from creator.

I use different,

I like to say source because it's kind of more all-encompassing,

But it's God,

Goddess,

The universe,

Nature,

And we all have different,

Something greater than us,

The great mystery that wishes us well.

I got this message that said,

You're going to go through a big shakedown,

A big transformation.

It's going to be very intense.

It's going to be very difficult,

But it's not a punishment.

It is a challenge course and pay attention to how you navigate it because you have special skills for navigating that you will want to know so that you can really watch from the inside and help other people because there's a great awakening is happening and a lot of people are going to need to know how to navigate.

When our human prayer does not align with our soul prayer,

Things fall apart and that's how I see it,

Especially now with the 2020 hindsight,

You know,

Like,

Oh,

I did the best I could as a human with limited ideas and understandings and the bigger thing had to take,

Disassemble what I put together so that I could be available for the bigger thing.

And it was those experiences,

Really the hard things that,

And navigating them and getting so much wisdom and learning so much about myself and how to see the perfection and to not go into a victimized story that's disempowered and the universe is happening to me versus happening for me.

Everything's happening in my favor and that's really what I learned to see is like,

Okay,

This is happening for my health and growth and best interest.

Finding the gold,

Finding the next best step was crucial because it's one thing when you're meditating and you have the beautiful epiphany and everything's amazing,

But are you really a light worker if you can't be compassionate when you're having a bad day?

If you can't show up and be kind and loving when things are not as you would have preferred them to be.

So I would say it's those big experiences and the very first one that really turned me on to that was I was married to a man that I was deeply,

Deeply in love with and he unfortunately got caught up in some really hardcore,

Very addictive substances and went into a paranoid schizophrenic state.

And so I watched the person that I love fall apart and go crazy and become somebody that I really needed to learn how to navigate the crazy world that he was creating and being able to do that and learn and grow from it and not be taken down by it,

Not lose myself.

And it was really profound.

Yeah,

That has been incredibly difficult and I guess that's what that message was about,

I'm taking.

Yes,

And I agree with you.

Yes,

I really have been trying to embody the everything happens for us,

Not to us mantra.

And there is a definite perspective shift when it comes from the victim viewpoint,

This happened to me to the everything happens for a reason,

But it's a little bit different than that even because it's a good reason,

Even though it seems bad.

Which really takes,

I think,

Regular practice and I really like the metaphor of the Etch-a-Sketch too because if there were a template for spiritual awakening,

It includes that,

That scrambling,

That,

As you said,

Deconstructing,

That shamanic death,

Whether it's the death of the ego or the death of the constructs that you've created of your life as per quo that you think it is.

And no,

It's not just one big glowing moment where the skies part and you see the light,

Usually there's that dark tunnel before you get there and you almost have to go underground.

It's almost like the butterfly being in that state.

All of the good stuff.

Yes,

And where you can't see what's going to happen,

It's very blinding,

You feel closed off,

You feel a little bit like everything's been taken away,

But it's that emptying that allows for that new life,

New path.

Yeah,

We would trade it in in a heartbeat if we knew we were transforming from a little earthbound creature to something with wings and beautiful wings at that.

Right,

Yeah,

That's beautiful.

So then how did you end up doing the different work that you do with the sacred ceremonies and all of that?

How did you?

Yeah,

Like I said,

When you're on a path of really following the spiritual breadcrumbs,

Do I delineate all the steps?

Which steps do I delineate?

But I will say that during the time that I mentioned that my life was falling apart,

My things were being destroyed,

I couldn't live at my own home.

The man I love,

I saw his soul just being eaten up by chemicals.

I saw him transform into a different person.

I had started a conscious practice in 1999 to deepen my meditation,

To become more aware of my multidimensional self,

Of my energetic layers on a solar level.

The spirit molecule,

You can read about it,

It resides inside of us and it gets activated when we're born and it gets activated when we die and it gets activated if we have a near-death experience.

People call it the spirit molecule because it basically helps us make contact with our divine selves with Source as a divine communion.

So I started working with that and I was meditating,

Doing yoga to really help me to go deep into all of my own trauma that was getting triggered from my home,

Not having access to my home,

My thing,

Just everything,

Love,

Relationship,

Material things,

Sense of safety and security.

I was having panic attacks and working with sacred medicine helped me to really tune in to what was actually mine to do instead of reacting to what was going on around me.

Like,

Oh,

He's threatening this so now I need to do this and it was like,

No,

What I really need to do is realize that my nervous system,

I'm in fight or flight and that is not the place to make creative solutions.

That's not how to manifest the butterfly,

You know,

If I'm scrambling to prevent being squashed as a caterpillar.

So those medicines really helped to amplify my meditation and yoga practices which brought me deep into inner wisdom and really helped me to connect even more deeply with my guides,

With everything that's greater than me that wishes me well and I got clear messages about,

Okay,

You know,

Ignore what he said,

You don't need to do this,

Move,

You know,

Move forward.

It's kind of like going through this gauntlet of demons threatening and growling and claws and just like moving through like,

Okay,

I'm going to listen to this and it got me deeply connected with that and really trusting and seeing like,

Oh my gosh,

It was a terrible thing to have to go through but I can't imagine it being any better,

You know,

Like I got through it with so much grace,

With so much strength,

With so much insight and so much ease without any regrets,

Without,

Well,

I could have done better or I should have done it that way in hindsight.

I really got through that.

That was amazing.

It was really phenomenal and it brought me to this deep trust that I could continue to live my life that way and that's what I've done is like I've continued to live my life that way and learned how to show other people how to do it as well with or without,

You know,

A lot of people don't work with medicines back in 1999.

People weren't talking about sacred plant medicines,

Sacred substances.

It wasn't in the mainstream dialogue like it is now.

I love the theory of spiritual breadcrumbs and following those because that's part of what really,

For me,

Makes me aware that I'm on the right track and to keep going,

Like you said,

Even when there's things happening and conflicts or doubts,

Whatever might come up,

Then I watch for those every day,

The synchronicities,

The signs,

The little coincidences and the more they happen,

Every time I see one,

I'm like,

Thank you just because I needed that extra little reinforcement,

That little validation,

That little nudge and that I found is important to pay attention to and a lot of people dismiss them because they think,

Oh,

Isn't that funny?

Isn't that weird?

But the more you pay attention,

The more you're given them and the more it becomes that reassuring,

Quiet guide and I find dreams to be that way too.

I find them to be the spiritual breadcrumbs of my life because they whisper those little reinforcements or reminders.

Yeah,

I agree.

I've done a lot of conscious studying,

Academic studying,

My own personal spiritual path of experience and experimentation.

I find that the subconscious works itself out,

Things that are unresolved in the subconscious and also deep messages that our body and the subconscious are trying to communicate can often emerge in the dream time to get our- Absolutely,

Yes,

Absolutely and the things,

They pretty much present the things that we need the deprogramming for in my opinion but in story format.

So,

Not necessarily for me anyway,

Totally literal but they can be decoded in a metaphorical language that really is speaking to whatever it is that I need to address or sometimes it's a solution too that I'm not seeing but it's trying to show me.

Yep,

Absolutely.

Yeah,

Dream work is really powerful.

Really powerful.

Our whole imagination,

This is one of the downloads that I really understood early on but it took me a long time to put it into a concrete human thought that I could express in words that could convey the understanding for some reason but it was,

We are finite,

We're in the material world.

Here's me,

There's you,

Here's my laptop and my camera and the light and they're all different things and then we have this infinite part of us,

Our soul that's if you believe that,

That we're infinite and a lot of people say,

You know,

We're spiritual beings having a human journey and we've been given this thing called the imagination which is really one of the only human experiences that's really common.

We all kind of understand imagination even if you're like,

Oh,

I don't have much of an imagination.

You could hear a new concept,

You could have a new idea come in or see a piece of art or something can come in that can expand like there's no limitation to the imagination except for whether we feed it or not and so our imagination is a bridge between our limited human selves and the divine and so in there also resides,

I feel like,

The dream world.

I love that concept and I'm glad you brought that up about the imagination because I was actually having an inner thought I think it was earlier today about,

Say you're going on a shamanic journey or you're doing a past life regression or you're meditating or you're having a vision quest and all of these images and thoughts come to you and you accept them but at the same time there's a part of you,

The ego maybe that is questioning,

Did I make that up?

Am I making this up?

And I had this interesting thought in that regard about that question and it was that,

Well,

It's your imagination but your imagination is all real as well.

Exactly,

We're making all of this up the meaning we ascribe the pieces of information we pay attention to and don't pay attention to and the narratives we attach we're all making it up but there's a lot more available information about the quantum field and quantum computing and we know now it's pretty common a lot of people have seen the studies many of them are even quite old now that when we look at something we change the waves turn to particles the particles turn to waves based on how we're regarding something and when people meditate together and focus on a particular place or a particular geometry depending on the feedback and the system that's taking in and analyzing that field it shifts things and we are co-creating we're creating our own reality when we get around other people with similar frequencies or dissimilar frequencies we are co-creating these realities we are making it up as we go that's why I think it's so important to be free from old traumas old patterns old conditioning because all of those are running programs that are running in the subconscious and they're set to perpetuate themselves and that's why we get those dreams that are like hey you know that dream you have where you're doing the same thing over and over and it's really stressful it's your system trying to say you're stuck in a pattern you're stuck in a loop right now like snap out of it there are different ways that the system tries and we often see them as I don't like that disruption I want things to just go smoothly it's trying to disrupt because what you're doing is not in alignment with what your actual human potential aligned with your soul's purpose are here to manifest and so those things come out the illness the pain the breakup the job loss the Kali Etch-a-Sketch those things happen to give us an opportunity to reset in a way that's more fully aligned but we don't know how to do that we've been disconnected from the knowledge of how to do that and we are being sold a lot of different like sold things you know like oh I'm feeling insecure so I'm going to do some shopping or I'm going to binge watch something or I'm going to eat something or I'm going to take a substance that's going to tune me out of my inner knowing instead of listening to the alarm that's going off that's all the pain and suffering in our lives body,

Mind,

Spirit,

Phenomena,

Relationships it's all something that's trying to get our attention we are manifesting something we're all manifesting we are all creating our reality and if something isn't aligned instead of a victim oh I'm being done to or I don't know or I'm just going to ignore and do something else like oh what what is this right here oh well how can I take care of you that's how we heal those things but we've just been taught to anesthetize be obedient little consumers religion very much the same your rewards on the other side just follow these rules now and you'll be rewarded in heaven we're creating heaven and hell right now I mean I can't tell you how many people who've come to work with me and friends and clients were like I followed all the rules of my religion and I wasn't happy I was miserable I wasn't myself I tried to fit into a box for to be loved to be accepted to survive for my own sense of spiritual survival for my own sense of being okay in the world and I feel like even if we don't even if a person doesn't go through serious abuse or neglect there's a trauma of really not being permitted to honor our authentic truth to honor our innate gifts and wisdom that we come through with and we're to know be quiet you're a girl so you need to be or you're a child so you know seen and not heard little girls don't behave that way little boys don't behave that way whatever it is we're told no you know you have to fit this paradigm and nature is diverse nature is wild nature is unpredictable and when we don't honor the true expression of the soul and learn how to celebrate it and give it yes direction but some freedom to shine and be that unique beautiful thing it is traumatizing because we start to feel like I can't trust my innate wisdom I can't trust my natural expression of my joy and love for myself and my life and the people and things around me I have to fit it in this form otherwise it's immodest or it's too much or it's too little and that disconnects us from our truth and that is a trauma and then we don't have any confidence in ourselves and we make decisions to please other people or to meet other people's expectations for a sense of safety and that is miserable and it is a trauma that we inflict and then we learn to inflict it on ourselves and that is the great subjugation whether you think it's aliens or bacteria or the ancient Romans or whatever to me it doesn't matter who initialized the whole domination over versus allowing the unique to come through and be held like a beautiful forest of all different kinds of things growing together and finding their natural way this is the quantum field all the things coming together and vibrating together and creating a beautiful reality that has space for everything and everyone as long as we're not harming anybody else so that was a long riff I loved it though I'm nodding my head over here yes everything you said yes and I talk about that a lot aligning with your authenticity is the only way that you can really step into what makes you unique and for all those things to vibrate together they can't all be the same everything has to have its own unique signature and that's what makes it work and it's trying to let go of that learned desire to be similar instead of being unique and all the fears and doubts and things that go with what it requires to be unique the confidence and the acceptance and all of that is equally learned you have to unlearn and then learn a different way but that I think is the lesson of being here is to see okay how many of these came out at the end the same or how many actually came out different and held their own right didn't be swayed by the shoulds wherever the shoulds are coming from I agree it requires a lot of courage to step aside and to find love for yourself enough love and honoring of the self and the sacred life we've been given to really treat it in a sacred way which is I'm gonna take care of it in a way that nourishes my soul instead of listening to everybody else tell me what I need to do to survive to be accepted yes absolutely and that's the only way that we can actually step towards enlightenment is to go down that path and it's the only way that we can really remove those I don't wanna say remove the shadows but walk with the shadows like embracing get to know what's in there a lot of people want to get rid of the shadow like you do even know what's in there there's a lot of I feel like everything inside of us is really beautiful it's just there are a lot of things that other people or because of trauma or you know accidents even you know things that happen with good intentions with bad intentions on purpose on accident that are painful and then we judge them and the labels then they hide in the shadows you know and it's like actually if you bring some love and kindness to all parts of the self instead of trying to eliminate we're still in this age of Botox for the soul or plastic surgery for the soul like you know if you treat every part of yourself as a sacred gift and do the work of going in and bringing the love and the compassion and cleaning those beautiful pearls of who we are cleaning off all of that detritus oh there's so much beauty in there and there isn't anything about a human unless they're really really outside the box in their range of mental wellness everything we do has as you were saying has a good reason my parents made some mistakes that were really really painful for me but when I learned about their childhood and like oh they were doing the best they could you know and I don't have anger I don't have resentment about that they did the best they could I get to do the best I can with myself and my relationships and having that kind of love and compassion and dedication to okay I'm gonna do the hard work of going towards those alarms going towards the shadow seeing what's in there you know feeding the hungry parts and cleaning up the dirty parts and taking care of the neglected parts and when we do that you can't reach enlightenment if you don't access your fullness your wholeness and you can't access your wholeness if you aren't dedicated on a regular pretty much daily basis to getting to really know the self with love kindness and compassion yes compassion is key giving yourself grace absolutely every day yes it is a practice and a dedication well I thank you so much for being here today and sharing your story as well as just everything that you've experienced and that is important to share with everyone on their journey so they don't feel so alone so that someone out there resonates and it helps them along that's really the point of all of this thank you again Amanda and I really appreciate you appreciate you thanks for all you do