As a Healer, I have been generally unfazed by various kinds of weird and distorted energies that we often encounter as part of a spirit realm. That may explain my interest in healing people with schizophrenia, who as part of their "hallucinations” see strange entities and hear unfriendly voices. People are generally surprised by my interest. Schizophrenia is one of the most feared of all mental illness conditions. Similarly, entities are probably one of the scariest and most avoided topics in modern shamanism, among healers, and in general. They are dark, unappealing, and may make some want to scream.

Not Knowing to be Afraid and Siberian Winters

Last week, I was listening to the news and heard that it was so cold in Florida that iguanas were falling out of trees; frozen. This news brought back a memory of the time between ages 3 and 6 when I lived in Siberia. My father, a physicist, worked in Akademgorodok ("Academic Town” of the city of Novosibirsk, Russia), an educational and scientific centre of Siberia. The winters there were extremely cold, and frozen-animal-fall-out was a common occurrence. All kinds of animals would end up frozen - squirrels, and rabbits, and mice among them. As a part of child’s play in that Siberian town, when the winter came, and many feet of snow fell, the snow was piled up so high, that us kids would dig up small caves inside the snow banks. Sheltered from the wind, we would decorate inside with collected frozen animals. Among the kids, finding a frozen animal was like getting a trophy.

One day, I brought home a large frozen mouse. When my mother opened the door, she screamed seeing me innocently and proudly holding it by its long-frozen tail. I was genuinely surprised and did not understand her discomfort. “What got into her, and why was she screaming?” - I thought. "It was just a frozen mouse that I was lucky to find, nothing to scream about. Adults are really strange.” I did not know the frozen mouse could be feared until I heard my mother scream.

When Entities are not a Big Deal

When I began as a fledgling healer, I would on occasion come across energies, embedded in a client's field, that resembled spiders or oversized ticks. They were clearly something to be removed. Removed carefully, I reasoned myself, so that no part of the tiny legs remained behind. Just as I would remove the real-life spiders or ticks. Encountering those energies did not elicit any supernatural fears in me. "This is just what energy looks like in this particular case. Not a big deal”, I remember thinking. Years later, when I was doing my studies in a healing school headed by an internationally acclaimed healer Rosalyn Bruyere, I overheard a group of healers discuss, with concern, issues around removing intrusive elemental entities. I was curious to know what they were talking about. They explained that people have entity attachments, and those entities have various levels of intelligence. “Elementals” are the ones with a lower intelligence. They differ in size and come in various shapes and forms - some are wormlike while others look like spiders or octopi. Being parasitic, they feed on people’s energies. You need to remove them very carefully making sure that you extract all the tentacles. "Nothing should be left behind. And you may need to be careful handling them” they cautioned me. "Oh, so that is what I was working with all these years, unknowingly” I realized. I had been successfully and effortlessly removing them, not knowing to be alarmed. I did not know that I was supposed to be concerned until their explanation, just like I did not know to scream at the sight of a frozen mouse until I saw my mom do so.

Shifting From Fear to Curiosity

This brings us to the issue of fear. That frozen mouse was not scary to me because children are naturally curious, rather than scared, of new experiences, until others teach them to be fearful. I’ve been bringing this curiosity back to those who are diagnosed with schizophrenia or any other form of psychosis. Well, just a couple of weeks ago, before the cold spell, if someone would have told you that it would be raining frozen iguanas on the streets of Florida, you would call this person seriously delusional. Whereas a child’s face would light up with enchantment when imagining that possibility. Over the past 30 years as a healer and an energy mastery coach, I have come to discover that many so-called delusions are about “things" that are more real than we think, and these “things" are feared out of proportion to their real meaning. The real problem and the real source of fear with schizophrenia is that people are told their experiences are not normal or real. That if they see or hear things, it means they suffer delusional hallucinations, and hallucinations meant they have a structural brain abnormality, basically a disease of the brain. That will scare anyone. We can turn minds of adults around to regain that childlike curious way of perceiving the world.

Improbable Realities

Let's begin treating entities and voices just like frozen iguanas falling off palm trees - improbable, but nevertheless a reality. A reality that people who experience them and I can share. I say to my clients: "No need to be alarmed. Don’t get me wrong. Yes, they are dark and unappealing and frightening. Yes, they may make you want to scream. I see them too. And I am not scared. I will help you not to be scared. Because they feed on your fears. In fear they grow. The more you get scared, the stronger they can get. Instead, tell yourself - it is just how it looks, not such a big deal. I am not crazy. My visions and my voices are not simply a figment of my imagination. It may show up as any kind of creature. It doesn't matter. Something happened along the way to make it possible for them to intrude. Most likely a recent or past trauma. Anything that is intrusive does not belong here. Remember iguanas. Being not native to Florida, they are similarly unwelcome invasive species and when the freezing weather comes their population greatly diminishes.

So, give your intrusive voice or a vision an icy look, a frigid greeting, and cold shoulder. Then have it taken by its long-frozen tail, and carried far away back to where it belongs. The Healing Manual “Energetic Boundaries: Healing Without the Effort” will give you guidance to the know-how when handling intrusions powerfully, and safely. And in case you cannot do it by yourself, I am that guy in the picture, a healer and an energy coach who can help.