What is a shaman?

From my present point of view someone like Saint Francis of Asisi would be considered both a Shaman and a monk or priest all at the same time. Why?

Because he has battle PTSD from being a knight for his area of Italy in a war or battle. He survived the trauma of all this but it permanently changed him in a very deep and lasting way. After this battle he is said to have gone out onto the roof and communed with the birds who landed on his hands. Then he stripped naked and left the town and began to rebuild and old Catholic church that was in ruins. He became a priest and monk and Saint to the poor and visited the Pope to create the Franciscan order of monks.

San Francisco is named after him in California by the way.

But, when I took a course in Anthropology around 1972 I read the definition of a Shaman in my text and it said something like: "A Shaman is a person who has died psychologically but their body still lives. And Because of this they live in the world of the living and the world of the dead at the same time. So, often they can assist the living in healing them in various ways."

This was my experience starting at age 2 when the angels saved my life from whooping cough. Then again I was saved by God when I invited him to live with me in my body at age 15 because I was terrified of dying from blunt trauma childhood epilepsy at the time. So, these many near death experiences changed me significantly in many ways at the time.

On top of all this I was forbidden to talk about any of what was happening to me by my father, especially to ANY relatives or anyone in my religion at the time which was very difficult for me.

But, I did tell my best friend in Junior High and High school about what was happening because this was helpful to me and to some degree to him because he had already survived polio and had the record in Junior high that wasn't broken for 25 years for the rope climb at the time.

So, what a shaman actually is is someone who has died psychologically who functions somewhere between someone living and someone dead because psychologically they have already died. So, they become a priest like being helping their tribe survive from then on just like Saint Francis did in some ways.

After I invited God to live in my body with me at age 15 and God did enter my body and changed my physical appearance a lot so girls started falling in love with me a lot. I knew they were falling in love with God and at first this was very confusing to me. But, at some point around age 16 I realized that I had become the Bride of God much like HOLY people do around the world so I just accepted girls and women were always going to fall in love with me because God lived inside of me now 24 hours a day full time.

When I invoked God into my life I know he came into my body partly because the moment I invoked God into my body I never had another seizure from that moment on. So, the instant end of my seizures coupled with a complete change in my physical appearance over the next 3 months told me everything. and in addition to this my perceptions of reality changed completely too.

So, I had chosen God to live in me so I wouldn't die but it turns out God had chosen me because he realized he could work with me too. And finally by about age 30 (this happened at age 15) finally at 30 I realized that God had made me a blessing to all mankind by training me for this work too.

By God's Grace