The Aboriginal Shaman Woman

"Gathering Bush Tucker", a painting by Aboriginal artist

June Sultan Napanga

It may come as a surprise to some readers, but there was a time when I was a skeptic of anything remotely spiritual or "psychic". In fact in my early twenties I was an avowed atheist and empiricist. I was quite hostile to any reference to such things. Yet over time my attitude relaxed slowly. I have previously mentioned one or two formative experiences which led to this shift. Many of them occurred at around the age of 26-27 (I'm now 44 years old). One other such event also occurred at this time, and involved an Aboriginal shaman woman. At the time I was living in Coffs Harbour, in northern New South Wales, Australia, and I had no conscious awareness of any innate intuitive ability I might possess. I was also happily free of any academic responsibilities. I had no intention of pursuing any higher education.

I sat down one day to read the local paper, and noticed a small ad for psychic readings in the classifieds section. I was then becoming interested in the psychic realm.  That evening I dialed the number and found myself speaking to a woman named Maria. The very next day I  walked over to her home for a reading (Coff Harbour is not a big town).

There was nothing special about Maria on the surface. She was quite down to earth, and although I was open to the possibility that she might offer something useful or even profound, I found myself quite skeptical. She didn’t appear to be particularly spiritual in the way I thought “spiritual” was supposed to be. Her house was far from tidy and was run-down. There was renovation being carried out as she spoke to me, with workmen coming and going. She also smoked, a strong dislike of mine.

“Put your paw up here,” she said. She took my hand, and began to “read.”

“I see here that there has been a great tearing,” she commented. “It’s like a part of you has been torn away.”

“Hmm, I have no idea what that could mean,” I mumbled skeptically. At the time I had little interest in emotional healing and had no genuine comprehension of the depth of the emotional scars I was carrying inside.

“Why is it that they made you feel like you didn’t exist?” she asked bluntly.

“I don’t know about that,” I mumbled. “My childhood wasn’t that great, but others have had worse.”

“Listen to what I’m telling you!” she scolded me gently. “There is a tearing here. I can hear it. You have been torn away.”

She interspersed the reading with information about her own life. Her father had been a kadaicha medicine man, and he had trained her in the ways of the shaman. She spoke of how she had struggled to deal with the responsibilities this entailed.

She went on with the reading.

“He is telling me to tell you that you should believe in yourself.”

“Who is telling you?” I asked with incredulity.

“My spirit guide, Zodiac.”

“Oh?”

“He speaks to me directly, just the way you do now. I am just telling you what he says.”

I listened. If nothing else she was an interesting case study.

“I can sense your father. He is a thoughtful man, but he is closed. Like a closed box. You can’t get near him.”

I laughed. “That’s certainly spot on. He isn’t exactly known for his affectionate nature.”

“Does he have heart problems?”

I folded my arms. “No. He doesn’t have any heart problems. As far as I know he’s in good health.”

“I see him with heart problems. I see him reaching for his chest. Actually it will be quite unexpected. How old is he?”

“Fifty-three or so.”

“He will be around sixty when it happens.”

“I guess we’ll just have to see about that.”

“Zodaic tells me you don’t trust yourself. You have much ability but you don’t let yourself believe you are any good because of what you were told when you were young. It’s time that you began to accept your abilities.”

“Abilities?” I scoffed. “What abilities might those be?”

“You see you are a very gifted person, but you don’t know it. You are very psychic.”

“Psychic? Me?” I laughed. “Sorry, you've got to be joking. I’m not psychic at all.”

“Just listen to what you are being told,” she firmly rebuffed me. “You have much to offer. You want to stretch yourself, but you don’t know how to do it.”

“Fair enough. Like most people, I suppose.”

“I see you going back to study.”

“Study what? I’ve had enough of study.” At that point in my life I would rather have stuck toothpicks in my eyeballs.

“I see you going for your masters, maybe even a Ph.D. You have done quite well academically.”

I hadn’t told her I had a university degree, so this did impress me a little. But she was dead wrong about my having any intention to study again, and I told her so.

“I didn’t do that well at school,” I said. I had always felt like I didn’t live up to my abilities, even though I had an honours degree in History.

“I see you lecturing before people,” she said. “There is a lot of knowledge and power that will come your way, but you will have to earn it.”

I listened. Maria was interesting if nothing else.

“You will not be given that power for a long time yet. You are not ready and you might destroy it. When you are ready, they will give it to you.”

I shuffled in my chair. “Who? Who will give me this knowledge?”

“Your spirit guides will. I also see an old man. He has a lot of knowledge. He’s going to take you under his arm and help you.”

Maria went on. Much of what Maria told me seemed rather grandiose, but there was one thing she mentioned that changed my life.

“You should listen to the songs in your head.” “They are put there by Spirit. It is one of the ways that they try to communicate with you and guide you.”

“Really?” I said, looking at her inquisitively. “Well, lots of people hear songs in their heads. That doesn’t mean they are messages from spirits.”

“You need to listen more.”

I paid Maria the forty bucks and left. Despite my aversion to her, there was something profound about some of the things she said. Her advice about music led me to listen more closely to song lyrics in my head. I began to listen more carefully to my inner mind. I discovered a veritable radio station of messages being relayed to me day and night.

I began to write down all the lyrics that came to me while sleeping or meditating, or when I was engaging in mundane activates such as talking, even writing up a lesson plan at school. What began as a kind of quaint hobby later became a rather more involved activity. Soon, I was being woken in the middle of the night by song lyrics being drummed into my skull while I was sleeping. One night I was awoken by a particular song in the middle of the night. Being drowsy and barely awake, I stumbled out of bed and walked over to the CD player to turn it off, only to find to my amazement that it was not even plugged in.

One night I was woken up by a woman singing. Yet it was unlike any singing I had ever heard. The language was unrecognizable to me, and there was no instrumentation. Simply an angelic female voice, with an ancient world feeling to it. The pace of the song was very, very slow, and the words drawn out into long melodic flute-like notes. As I was listening I realised that I was not hearing it with my ears. It was coming from within, or perhaps beyond. I sat up in bed and the singing stopped. Then I deliberately relaxed into a light trance state and the singing was there again. It was almost as if the woman was serenading me. It was the most beautiful thing imaginable. I fell into a deep sleep.

At other times I have been warned of danger, given insights into the nature of mind and consciousness, aided in identifying my own healing issues, and assisted in relationships with others.

I began to recognise an intelligence beyond my conscious mind with a greater awareness than I, an intelligence which I could access at will. This was the beginning of my understanding of Integrated Intelligence.

P.S. In 1997, my father died very suddenly and unexpectedly from a heart problem. He was just a few weeks short of his 58th birthday. Till that moment, I had forgotten Maria's prediction. Eight years later I began my doctoral studies, which I finished in 2006.