Shu'em Wake

"Death is the single most important event of your life.  Everything you do in your life is but a preparation for this final step."

Abbah Frederic

Guiding the departed through the process of death is a very important shamanic task.  For a shaman, the human form consists of a complex of energetic vibration on which consciousness can focus its attention.  In such a way there is a vibration in which one is conscious of body, in another vibration one is conscious of thinking, and yet other vibrations give access to the realities of feeling and intent.
In the death process one looses one by one the vibrations that one was conscious of during one's life.  First one looses the body and next the thinking.  The feeling-consciousness, which contains also all emotional memories from the preceding life, remains in existence however for a longer period of.  "time" - seen from our perspective of time in life.  When somebody has died, there is a real danger that he or she remains attached to these old memories and therefore to the old emotions of life.  This can be the result of fear, of material attachments, or one's inability to cope with the new situation.  Almost all traditional cultures therefore developed customs and practices that aim at helping the deceased in their passing into another kind of existence.  In our materially oriented western culture this tradition was lost.  Many funeral and cremation ceremonies even hamper, unintentionally and unwittingly, the passing of the deceased.

A harmonious passing from this to another form of existence is of great importance, to both the deceased and the surviving relatives.  When this passing doesn't develop smoothly and the deceased remains focused on the world this attention will draw energy from the relatives, because his own source of energy (the body) no longer fulfils this task.  This can cause a number of psychological and eventually physical problems for the surviving relatives.

The Shu'em Wake is performed by one or more healers of the Order of the Shu'em who were trained for this task.  During this wake, which takes place preferably during the evening or night following the passing, the healers guide the deceased in an altered state of consciousness to the new form of existence.
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