by Candy Cribbs: Lynn Andrews rocked the world when her first book, Medicine Woman, hit the shelves in 1981. 
The book captivated its readers with Lynn’s shamanic experiences and the ancient wisdom taught to her by two incredible Cree medicine women, Agnes Whistling Elk and Ruby Plenty Chiefs.
Since then, Lynn continued to write books, and travel around the world, sharing the teachings. She has bridged the gap between the ancient and the modern day practice of sacred knowledge, and has contributed greatly to the uplifting of women’s power through wisdom in all aspects of society.
I was ecstatic when Medicine Woman came out. For me, it validated that my own sacred experiences were not bizarre, random happenings that no one else could possibly understand. With each book that Lynn wrote thereafter, I ate up the knowledge and began to see everything from a new viewpoint. I felt incredibly empowered.
During March, Lynn will be joining Jennifer Morse in Seattle for a workshop entitled “A Path to Power.” I recently interviewed Lynn for the readers of The New Times, and share our conversation with you now.
Candy: Have you always been sensitive to the world of non-reality, even as a child?
Lynn: Yes! I was born in Seattle, but raised in Eastern Washington. I rode my horse to school and often into the wilderness for hours at a time. I would see light in things, not as godlike, but as something we are all made of. I rode along Dead Man’s Creek, and could see the light on the surface of the water play with the sun. Somehow, it would take me to the source, the sacred place within me.
I could see the light and colors coming from people around me, especially if they were sick or in distress. I would know that there was something wrong with them!I’ll never forget, when I was young, I rode my horse to school along with a friend named Beverly. On one particular morning, she was very upset. Her father had beaten her up badly. I couldn’t see physical marks on her, but I could sense it, and could see an incredible red aura around her. I said to her, “My gosh, your lights are really different today!” She looked at me in shock. When she realized I could read her, she felt it was an invasion of her privacy.
That was the end of my communicating any of my ability to see for many, many years. In fact, I tried to destroy the ability! It took me years to realize that to be a whole, functioning and powerful person, you cannot disown parts of yourself.
Candy: Many people believe that they must leave their daily jobs and routines and travel to a distant sacred place to find magic and awe in their lives. Does this subject come up often in your workshops?
Lynn: Yes! And I think it’s one of the greatest mistakes that people find themselves lost in.
Every day of every person’s life is a great mystery, and full of magic! We don’t know why our heart is beating, or why we are able to breathe. The fact is, the reason isn’t really all that important — you need to live your life, because you have been given an extraordinary gift.
We spend a lot of time trying to analyze, to figure out, and put rules, regulations, and belief systems around everything. We do that, in a way, to simply limit the magnificence of our experience! There is a part of us that is afraid to become what we are trying to become. People are terrified of it. We come here to become enlightened, and it seems to be the one thing we’re most afraid of.
Candy: What techniques work best for you in finding and holding your center of grounding?
Lynn: Visualization. What you imagine is real. If you can visualize with your intent, you can manifest anything.
One way to really ground yourself is by visualizing your legs being rooted into Mother Earth, maybe becoming the roots of a tree, moving down into the earth. Sometimes, just eating something helps ground you. It puts you back into your body. Or, meditate with stones, and things that are very dense in vibration.
Exercise also helps put you into your body. Spiritual people need to remember to exercise, because as you are powerful spiritually, you need to be very strong physically. It’s all about balance. If you’re ungrounded, you’re unbalanced.
Candy: Is the topic of the upcoming workshop, “A Path to Power,” basically to teach people how to utilize the Sacred Wheel?
Lynn: Yes, it is. The workshop teaches how to utilize the Sacred Wheel; in other words, how to use vertical acts of consciousness with horizontal acts of consciousness. The Sacred Wheel has directions like a compass. The symbolic meanings of each direction represent a paradigm for the process of the mind.
I’m concerned about society today. We seem crazed with technocracy, and so seduced by computers. A tremendous amount of information is coming in through the use of computers, giving us an extension in our ability to retain memory. The knowledge from the information and data is wonderful, but it is an East-West, or horizontal, kind of movement. People think that is an end in itself.
I think that people are forgetting to bring down spirit and divine guidance into their lives, by what I call acts of vertical consciousness — or moving up to spirit, in the north, and bringing that spirit down into the south for the manifestation of whatever your dreams are.
Another thing that happens is, people get involved with their spiritual path, and they forget to balance their physical lives. Then they lose the meaning of why they were born into the physical body or [the ability to] understand how to live in the physical world. They need to be balanced in spirit and body.
Candy: Right, and there’s a loss of focus on intuition as well.
Lynn: I think so! The spirit in the north is about intuition, creativity, inspiration, and imagination. It comes from your ability to open your heart to whoever your god is.
I think a lot of people have forgotten how to open their hearts. I recently wrote a book, titled Walk in Spirit: Prayers for the Seasons of Life.
The reason I wrote it is because there is such a lack of inspiration and ability to bring spirit into our lives, yet, there is such a hunger for it at the same time.
When I started this path, in about 1980, and started speaking publicly, I was stunned at how little people knew. They thought a medicine woman was a nurse! It took me a long time to talk about what I am approaching even today.
People from all walks of life are open to it; not just people who are interested in shamanic endeavor, but people who are interested in the healing arts. As people heal their bodies, they are beginning to see that they are in the spirit as well as the physical.
Candy: Do you ever feel out of place because people don’t believe you can experience the paranormal experiences that occur in your life? How do your teachings show them differently?
Lynn: Everybody’s life is magical. We just don’t acknowledge it. For instance, we pick up the phone, knowing it’s our mother calling us. That’s much more than coincidence, but we chalk it up as coincidence. It is an aspect of ourselves that we don’t celebrate. It is the magic and the powers that we have in our own mind that we don’t acknowledge.
I really believe that in order to learn something, you’ve got to experience it. The very first thing that Agnes Whistling Elk ever said to me was, “You people, in your world, live on borrowed knowledge. You sit in classrooms and listen to people talk about extraordinary events of their life. How do you make those events part of your own dream experience?”I wrote my books about my experiences with Agnes, Ruby, and all of the women of the Sisterhood, so that people who read them could come along on my journeys. They could, at least in part, experience it. I think everyone who reads a book rewrites it for himself or herself.
Candy: You’ve had some shocking experiences! How would you tell someone how to find their center during times of fear in certain dreams or situations of terror?
Lynn: It takes training. Hope-fully, you will have the instinctual wisdom or knowledge to move into your center and let God, or your guardians, simply guide you through it.
I created the Lynn Andrews Center for Sacred Arts because I knew that people needed to have tools at hand, whether it be a drum to use with nature, or how to pull in sources of energy and power, or whatever. You need to train yourself to gather your intent.
You don’t get a powerful intent without practice! Intent needs to be trained and guided. And, will is what you picture your desires to be. You need to realize what it is you are looking for, then go for it!Sometimes it’s a process of letting go of everything you have ever known, and finding that emptiness that is inside of you. Or, finding a place within you to live.
Candy: How can we best use the teachings of the Sacred Wheel to learn and grow from our karmic encounters?
Lynn: First of all, I think karma is something that people may or may not understand or believe in. In my teachings, I never ask people to believe in something they haven’t experienced. I feel that one of the problems we have, as a species, is that we tend to put senses around our consciousness. We can never get past those senses.
Say, for example, I was to believe in Hinduism; therefore, no other truth, no other approach to an understanding of the sacred, is let into my world of knowledge. I think that is a great mistake. To become a wise person, not just a person of knowledge, you need to experience sacredness from all angles.
You need to look at history and see how the different religions were constituted in the first place. A lot of religions, in a sense, are a device for the period of history that man has lived through. Not only for control of people, but to show people how to live in a sacred world.
When Buddha was alive, people were very wealthy and happy people, for the most part. So, people didn’t mind the idea of coming back and having karma, lifetime after lifetime. The thought of it was very pleasant. When Jesus Christ was walking the earth, people were poor and life was hard. I think the last thing they would have wanted to hear was about karma, lifetime after lifetime.
I’m not saying what I believe in, but just saying we need a more aware and conscious view of what this life path is really about! I think there are many more people today who are very hungry for the meaning of life.
My statement is not meant to make anyone angry. I am only speaking from a philosophical viewpoint.
My teachers have taught me the shamanic way, but it is really much more of a universal truth. The women I have learned from have not taught me the specific cultural traditional values. They are teaching me a universal consciousness that relates to all people, from all periods of history.
Candy: There is no separateness. All truth is the same!
Lynn: Right! Truth is always, always the same. I don’t think anyone owns truth. It is a part of God, and we are all part of God. Just as the truth has always been a part of us!
