Shamanic Secrets of Life, Death, and Ancient Wisdom – An Interview with Shaman Durek

From seeing spirits as a child to marrying into royalty, Shaman Durek reveals the life-changing lessons he’s learned on his path as a sixth-generation shaman.

Shaman Durek has lived a life that most of us can hardly imagine. From seeing spirits as a child to experiencing a full death and return, his journey is anything but ordinary. In this episode, he opens up about his early connection to the spirit world, his unique upbringing between ancient African traditions and Christian teachings, and the moment everything changed when he crossed over to the other side. With honesty, warmth, and a deep sense of purpose, Shaman Durek helps us understand what it really means to awaken in the midst of global transformation.

We talk about “the blackout,” a term he uses to describe the chaotic, beautiful mess of our collective evolution, and why this time in history is calling us to rise with compassion, clarity, and courage. He also shares what it means to be chosen as a shaman, how his work with spirit isn’t about ego, and what it’s like being married into the royal family while still staying true to his mission. This conversation will stretch your mind, open your heart, and remind you of your own divine power. To enjoy the conversation, keep reading or listen and subscribe for free on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, or YouTube.

In Spirit Hacking, you describe this time period as “the blackout.” What does that mean to you?

Shaman Durek: The blackout is a time when humanity comes into facing all of the energies that have been distorted throughout time and space that are coming up to the surface to be brought back into a field of love. But during that time, like any time when there’s a birthing of something, it’s requiring people to generate more compassion, more patience, more acceptance, more love and more understanding. And so any energies that are coming up right now are going to be very triggering for a lot of people, because the blackout is a time that we, shamans and beings in the spirit world will be communicating with the spirit world, has been allotted to understand that the spirits are now coming in at a very high level frequency.

When you bring a high level frequency into a dense energy field, it actually starts creating this conundrum of chaos, and everything that people fear. So everything from abandonment, which is a form of separation, ideas of judgment, anything that’s going to make you look at your judgments, make you look at the things that you don’t like, because, remember, a great portion of humanity is operating in this field of disillusionment, and the disillusionment aspect is the part where people quantify their reality based on their opinions, not based on their relationship with spirit.

Everything that has been operating in opinion based on what people feel or ideas that they have that are not congruent with love and acceptance and compassion and forgiveness, and all of these higher dimensional fields of shifting energies from its different dimensional ranges are being brought up for us to deal with. So to some it will be very tumultuous. To others it may feel very scary. To some people they may see it as a joyous time.

For me, I’ve been awaiting for this time in evolution and I’ve been looking forward to it since I was a kid, since the spirits first alerted me about this blackout period of where we have to really take responsibility for being these powerful, creative sources of energy and learning that we’re channeling energies every single day. And this now it’s really about utilizing discernment, but utilizing the fields of love, of compassion, kindness, love, generosity, nurturing, really creating sustenance and also longevity for our species. And that’s what all this is about and that’s why everything is triggering people right now in the blackout, because it has to bring these, these old sentiments up to be resolved and healed.

Can you take us back to when you first discovered your shamanic or psychic abilities at age five? What were those experiences like?

Shaman Durek: What’s interesting is, it started when I was in my crib, and I started noticing that there are different types of beings showing up and staring at me from my crib, and I would tell my father and my mother that there was different people, different family members, and different types of tribal elders and so forth staring at me. But it was when I started getting older, and I started getting like five years old, six, seven, eight years old, I never looked at it as I had a psychic ability. I never even knew what that meant. I never had an idea about what supernatural ideas that were more present in the modern-day terms. I was just a kid who was operating in its own intelligence of what I felt and experienced and what I heard, and so, for me, I didn’t become aware that something was different with me until I got into grade school.

When I got into grade school, I started realizing that what I was experiencing wasn’t what everyone was experiencing, or some people experienced some of it, but then they shut it down, and so I thought it, I saw it more as people trying to run from their divine birthright versus embrace it. And so, for me, being able to listen to spirits and see spirits and colors and feel things like chills up the back of my neck and all of these things was more present for me to explore than it was for me to deny, and so my abilities were always present, and I never saw them as them being something wrong.

Also, because I grew up in a family that was relatively—one side of my family was very much in touch with our old African traditions and roots, and also in Yorubaian culture, which is what my family’s practice comes from. And then the other side of my family was Seventh-day Adventists, and so we were studying the Bible, and when I was reading a lot of the teachings of Christ, I noticed that throughout the stories of Christ, there’s these awakenings that are taking place throughout the Bible. There’s the speaking in tongues in the Book of Acts. There’s Jesus being able to communicate directly to spirit, to God, to his father, to the divine, which I always see as a mother and a father energy.

Then, there’s the Holy Spirit, which is all of these things are very beautiful awakenings of energy, awareness of energy, awareness of God presence within you. And so I always was confused about why religion was utilizing parables and ideas throughout the Bible to stifle or to direct human consciousness or the development of our species as a whole, instead of remembering the teachings that Christ said, which is you shall do greater things than I, right. And so, from there, I started studying both the shamanic aspects of my family’s roots in African wisdom and then also studying other forms of religion, not just Christianity, but also understanding Catholicism and Hinduism and Buddhism and all forms of philosophies and ideas of thought.

As a young kid, I was the type of kid that wasn’t really interested in what other kids were doing. I was more interested in spending time with spirit and really honing my craft. And I use it as a form of craft because I realized that people were not acknowledging these beautiful birthright gifts that they have, these God-given gifts that they’re already given, and I wanted to connect with those in a bigger way.

So, I spent a lot of time when spirits would talk to me at night in my room, when I feel like a monster under my bed or in my closet, I would engage those things instead of run from them or go into fear about it. If the hair went up the back of my neck, I would say, okay, I’m present. I felt that, what is this, and then I would hear a voice tell me what it is, or something called my name. I would answer it and say, yes, who are you, where do you come from, what are you about, and what it did was it matured my abilities at a very young age.

I started taking clients at age 14, and in my dad’s back of his house, I started seeing adults and supporting them and serving them and letting them know what spirit was telling me about them and how I can nurture them to recognize their power. And what I wanted—one of the things that I always loved about religion was that it’s to worship no idols before me, and it was the idea that God is everything. And so I never looked at it as, oh, I’m Shaman Durek, and I have all these powers, and I’m this amazing person. I never looked at it that way.

I always saw it as, I’m a servant of the light. I serve love, I serve kindness, compassion, understanding, forgiveness, and my role is not to glorify myself, but all the glory goes to God, and I’m just a vessel for God’s light and energy to show up as me, as God is the vessel that shows up as you, as the tree and the flower, and so forth.

And through that experience, at a young age, I started to travel, when I got a little bit older, to countries like Israel and Palestine and Turkey, and traveling and living in these countries, learning their languages and learning how to adapt to different cultures. And why I was doing that was to understand their belief systems—the Torah, the Talmud, the Quran—getting into understanding why people believe what they believe and how does it affect them on an anthropological level and a sociological level. And then I started formatting that into ways to support people.

You’ve spoken about your death experience—not just a near-death experience, but actually being dead for several minutes. Can you share what that was like?

Shaman Durek: Yeah, I don’t know why people call it that. It doesn’t make sense to me, because I died. I went to the other side, I came back. So if that’s what they want to call near-death, but that’s not near-death, it’s death. 

Can you describe what happened during that experience, and how it influenced your shamanic journey?

Shaman Durek: The way that it impacted my journey—well, it kind of happened in sequences.

The first sequence was, I was living in London. I met this guy who does hypnotherapy out of Greece. He invited me to Greece to come do it because I didn’t really believe in hypnotherapy, so he wanted me to see what he was doing. So I flew to Athens and got a chance to spend time with him. He put me under in front of his class, and when he put me under—which I didn’t believe I was under—but supposedly, I didn’t think anything happened.

Then, he played this tape recorder, back when we actually had tape recorders, and the tape had my voice on it, but it was softer and more gentle. I was talking about the fact that I was the Oracle of Delphi, that I was a woman in Delphi. I had never known anything about Delphi—I had never read about it. I knew nothing about Delphi whatsoever.

For him to experience that, he told his mom and dad, and the next day they drove me to Delphi. I remembered everything while I was there. Not only did I remember everything, I remembered being this young woman who used to sit on a pedestal with smoke coming up from a crevice, having visions.

When I got there, I saw all these spirits, and it was like they had been waiting for me. When I started talking to them, they told me things that were going to happen. They told me I was going to marry into the royal—happen. They told me I was going to die a horrible death. They told me about the timeframe when I would die.

So that was the first part. Then, when I was in the jungles of Belize working with the shamans, I was with this medicine woman shaman. She was putting herbs in water, boiling the steam. You look into the steam and read what it shows. She said to me, “When you leave the jungle, you’re going to die a horrible death.”

I said, “Well, I don’t want to die a horrible death, so how can I change it?” She said, “You can’t change it because you already put it into motion. You already made the decision. Every step, every choice you’ve made has led to this moment, and you’ll know when it comes.”

So that was another leading-up point. I always had people read my palms, or psychic readers would give me readings, and they’d go, “Oh my God, you’re going to die, but you’re going to come back.”

It was very interesting. Then, what happened was—I had just gotten back from the jungle. I came to Los Angeles and rented this treehouse. I was in my treehouse, and all of a sudden, I woke up, and there was a spirit in front of me. It was like a spirit from the underworld.

The spirit said to me that it had come to put me through trials. So I was like, “Okay.”

The moment I stood up, I could feel the spirit reach into my body. I fell to the floor, gasping. I couldn’t walk, so I crawled on my arms to a telephone and called my friend. My friend came to pick me up, and when he put me in his car, my head smashed into the dashboard, and I went into a rolling seizure.

He called the ambulance directly to come get me from his car and take me to the hospital.

So that’s what he did. When I was in the ambulance, I remember coming out of one of my seizures—I had never had a seizure in my life. So I said, “Oh, this is interesting. This is what a seizure is like.”

The paramedics thought it was kind of funny that that’s what came out of my mouth. They brought me on a stretcher with my friend by my side. Within a couple of minutes, my friend looked at me and said, “Where did you just go?” I said, “What do you mean?”

He said, “You were talking to someone. I saw this woman appear, and she was talking to you with all this love, telling you it’s going to happen soon.” I looked at him and started crying. “Oh my God, I’m going to die.” He said, “No, you’re not going to die. You’ll see a doctor, you’re fine, you’re overreacting.”

My friend is very practical. I said, “No, I’m really going to die, and I don’t want to die alone. Can you just stay here with me while I go through this process?” Within a couple of minutes, I felt knives stabbing all parts of my body, my organs shutting down one by one. I could feel the excruciating pain. Then, all of a sudden, my lungs collapsed, and I stopped breathing.

Then people came. I remember—they gave me a tracheotomy. I was out of it, though. They put something—I don’t remember what it was. I just remember hearing them talking, saying they were getting oxygen into me. I think they made some kind of hole near my neck, and I started breathing a little better, but then it got worse.

Then, all of a sudden, I saw all these beings around me. They lifted me out of my body like a liquid—it was like water. It was so light, and all the pain stopped. I was standing among all these beings, and I could hear the voices and thoughts of everyone in the room—the doctors, the nurses. I could hear them panicking, doing all the things they were doing. I saw them trying to shock me, and I wasn’t resuscitating.

And I saw my grandmother. I saw family members, and they were very clear that I needed to confront this one aspect. The way they said it—it wasn’t forceful—it was more like, There are some things that you have to take responsibility for, and you’re now going to go into that. And then, before you knew it, I was in this. It was this light, this bright light, and liquid everywhere. I was like in an ocean or something. And when I went into that light, I saw my birth.

Shaman Durek Verrett and Family

Not only did I see my birth, but I saw my mom. I saw myself inside of my mom, and I saw my mom. And then I saw it through everyone’s eyes and views, and I noticed that my dad wasn’t there, which freaked him out later when I told him that I knew. I saw all of these different things happening, and it led to everything I went through in life, every person that I’ve ever hurt, how it hurt them, and how they hurt someone because of it. I saw the rippling effect of how we human beings affect life, and we don’t even realize that we’re affecting it just with a simple smile, a touch, a hug, or a conversation, and how it echoes out through the universe. I saw all of it.

Then it was all shown to me through every point of view. And then it came back, and it was this feeling of acceptance, like I saw these colors and energy spinning around. And it was this feeling of like I’m okay with it. Immediately, I was back in the water, swimming up to the surface. I could see this bright, shimmering light, and all of a sudden, I was on a beach. On this beach, there was this woman in front of me, smiling, with this beautiful energy of love coming at me.

She spoke, but it wasn’t like her mouth was moving—she spoke in my consciousness. She said, What type of body would you like to have? Immediately, in my consciousness, I responded back to her—almost like autopilot—and said, I want the body that I once had. All of a sudden, I saw my hands. I saw my beautiful skin, but I didn’t feel bones or anything. I didn’t feel cold or any weird coldness, like sometimes we feel sensations in our legs and body. I didn’t feel any of that.

I felt just warm, comforting—like the most amazing energy you could ever imagine. It’s like the best day you had in the sun, without cooking yourself—almost like there’s a light breeze, but it’s the best breeze, the best feeling. Then I looked up at the sky, and it was like making sounds. It was beautiful. And then the ground—I reached down to grab the sand, and it felt like these beautiful particles of memories of mine. I touched it and everything.

Then, she said to me, I know you have a lot of questions. What would you like to start with? And I was like, Why do people suffer? And she said, Malfunction in thinking. I said, Why do people have war on our planet? She said, Malfunction in thinking. I said, Why do people go through so much pain? And she said, Malfunction. Every time I asked a question about humanity, it was the same answer—Malfunction in thinking.

Then, I asked, What is malfunction in thinking? And she said, It’s every time a human being thinks against who they truly are. And she said, What you truly are is pure love. Anything that suggests you to think against that is malfunction in thinking. And so this is why people go through suffering and pain and everything, because their mind is being hijacked by information that is incorrect. And that information is not based in love, it’s not based in kindness, it’s not based in an understanding that you and everyone else is the divine.

And so I was like, Oh, that’s amazing. And then I saw like images of Christ. And then I asked if Jesus and Christ were real. And it said, Everything in God’s kingdom is real, and you have created it to be this way. So I was like, Oh, okay. And then it wasn’t like a question of trying to contemplate if it was being honest or not. It was just like everything was said, and I was like, Yeah, that’s right. Like, I knew that.

Then she asked me if I wanted to go to a communal area or visit anyone, or if I wanted to go to my own experience of what I believe this to be. And I said, So, you mean everyone sees things differently here? And she said, Everyone sees things differently once they get into their soul consciousness. Your soul consciousness has a view of heaven. Other people have a soul consciousness that has a view of heaven. But the communal areas are created collectively through everyone’s view of what is the most beautiful experience of this place.

And so I said, I want to go to a communal area. And she took me to a communal area, and it was beautiful. There were people there talking and walking. There was a lot of green and mountains, and there was also a bridge in one area. And people were all created—there were these orbs of light that were moving around. And she said, That’s other people’s consciousness merging together to create this place.

It was so free and playful, and there was so much we could do there. You don’t have any rules like we have here on Earth, where if you want to eat, you can eat. If you don’t want to eat, you don’t have to eat. If you want to swim, you can swim. If you want to fly, you can fly. If you want to turn into an old woman, you can be an old woman. If you want to be an old man, you can be an old man. If you want to be a child again, you can be a child again. You can be anything you desire to be, and there’s nothing but pure love all the time.

People were visiting different people. People were doing different things. There were different beings doing different things. That was really amazing. And then I spoke to this little girl, and she told me that she had died in a war and never got a chance to be a little girl, so that’s why she chose to be a little girl. She said she was doing that for a while. And I don’t know what a while meant, because it wasn’t like she said there was a time. It was just like for whenever she wants to.

Then I got to visit family members. I got to visit old friends. That was really nice—to reconnect with some of my friends who passed away when I was young. And then she came back. I was doing all these really fun things, like I was changing my body into sound vibrations and color and whizzing through the sky with friends. And then I was doing so much, and it felt like I was there for the longest time.

And then she said to me, I heard that you want to go back. And I said, Yeah, I do. And she said, Do you want to go back with your memories intact, or do you want us to erase your memories again? And I said, I want to go with my memories. And she said, Well, if you go with your memories, you will always remember this place. And remember, on Earth, Earth is created by the consciousness of different people’s ideas and beliefs.

You will see the suffering and the pain and even go through it yourself, and you’ll still remember this place. And it’s your choice to decide if you want to stay in the body or not. And so I said so. There’s no like I have to do this or anything. She says there’s never been anything like that. That’s all created through the mind to create some form of structure. That is created, but it’s all based on what you want to do.

I said okay. And then, I said goodbye to my family and friends. I walked back to this beach but I’m not walked, we’re kind of glided, because she asked me if I wanted I could just think about something and appear. But I decided to glide back and I got to the beach and I saw all these people on the beach and some were human, some were not.

There was these spinning lights in the water and the waves were coming and, these beings that look like ETs or something were walking us to the water. And we walked into the water and then this light was like turning us into pure liquid, and we went flying through space and I saw all these other planets and galaxies and like beautiful planets that had like four moons. It was like beautiful.

Then, all of a sudden, I ended up in front of Earth and Earth was this vibrant, vibrating, beautiful planet in front of me. And then, all of a sudden, I started falling towards the Earth and when I fell into the Earth, it was almost like my body was turning into light instead of liquid, because at first I was moving through space like liquid and then it turned into light.

Then, there were these ETs, and they had like really big necks and really big eyes and very glowy, white, grayish, like glowy, not even say grays, but it had like almost a fluorescent look with a little bit of gray in it, and their skin was moving like liquid and they took my body out of light form and moved me into a different form and then they started putting all of these lights around me and I heard this high pitch sounds like, du, du, du and then, all of a sudden, this one like ET being looked down at me and said okay, you’re ready to go.

Then, all of a sudden I they put me in this kind of liquid and all of a sudden I woke up and I had entered back in my body and I remember gagging. I couldn’t breathe. I could hear the doctor say we got you. It took us some time, but we got you back. And we’re inundating you.

And I remember them putting this huge tube down my throat and I was gagging and it was so much and I couldn’t. They’re like you’re paralyzed, you can’t move your legs, and I just like went into shock and they said we’re inducing you in a coma. They were like saying all this stuff out loud, it was like echoing, and and then all of a sudden I was in a coma.

And I remember standing at the side of my bed and like walking around the hospital and and I could see everything that was going on, people visiting me, talking to me, but I was in a coma. And then when I came out of the coma, it was like this being that came, it was like an angel and it took me back to my body and it says your body’s ready for you to return to it and so now you can go back into your body and feel safe.

Then I went back in my body and when the moment I came back in my body, there were these dark beings in the room with me. And these dark beings told me like why did you come back here? Like you can’t help us? You should have just stayed home.

Then, this other being was there and it was an angel. And the angel was glowing with all these like amoebic type wings that looked like eyes all over it, and it said don’t listen to what they tell you. We’ll show you how to get your body, how to get back, but you have to listen to every instruction we give you and so that was my experience.

Shaman Durek doing meditation for litvibe with niece and producer Natalia Alava

What does it mean to be a shaman? How does someone become one, and how does your practice differ from other types of shamanism?

Shaman Durek: Shamanism isn’t something that’s associated to tribal culture. Shamanism is not a religion; it is a way of life. A lot of people think you have to be born in a tribe in order to be a shaman. A tribe is a tribe. The shamans are chosen in the tribe because there has to be someone who operates in the spiritual context of the evolutionary aspect of humanity.

So shamans are chosen by spirits. It’s not something you become. It’s something that your spirits and ancestors choose you, and you’ll know when they choose you because they see in you a part of your being that’s childlike and also open to their instruction.

I think one of the most challenging things for people is that they go into this idea that shamanism itself is working with plant medicine. That doesn’t make you a shaman. If you are working with a form of medicine, you either are an ayahuasca, or you work with peyote, or you work with ibogaine. You are operating in earth shamanism. It doesn’t mean you’re a shaman.

Earth shamanism, water shamanism, fire shamanism, air shamanism, and spirit shamanism is a certain way of dedicating yourself to an element. So the earth shamans are ones who dedicate themselves to the knowledge and study of everything that has to do with the earth, and that means, like, the patterns of earth, the weather, the plants and what they do, what is poisonous, what is not poisonous, what type of effects, how much you should actually give someone, and so forth.

And what is the diet? What is the thing that your body needs in order to be able to facilitate that type of medicine? But to be a shaman is a different level of understanding, because to be a shaman, you have to be willing to listen to spirit and override what the mundane world wants you to accept.

So it requires a certain level of devotion. It requires a certain level of dedication, or should I say, respect would be the better word. They want me to say respect. Respect is a better word because a lot of people don’t respect spirits. They don’t respect the trees, they don’t respect the flowers, they don’t respect the nature spirits, they don’t respect the old spirits that require sacrifice on the earth.

For instance, people don’t realize that earth is… there are spirits that are called balancing spirits, and these spirits require a life in exchange for life. So they might create a tsunami and that tsunami takes out a thousand people or a hundred thousand people. That’s what spirit required for those other people to live. So there’s a balancing that takes place.

A lot of people, when they think about shamanism, they only see it in a very 3D view. They don’t understand the quantum levels of what shamanism really means. The level of respect is that when a spirit talks to me, I don’t go like, oh, did I make that up, is that true? No, I go, I hear you, okay, and then what is your counsel?

And the spirit will give me its counsel, and I say, okay, and if I take your counsel, what will happen for me? And then they tell me, and if I don’t take your counsel, what will happen? Okay, great. And if I talk to beings in the underworld, I say, oh, well, why are you causing cancer for this person? And the underworld beings will tell me because they are not acknowledging that they’ve been holding on to anger. They think the world is against them, they think this, they think that. So, I talk to all dimensional fields. In shamanism, there is no separation.

The difference is what element are you mostly pre-designed to speak, to connect with? Some people are moving more towards the shamanic ways of earth. So they study plant medicines, they study botany, they study agriculture, they study all of these different ways in which plants and trees and flowers and all that have spirits that help you to recognize yourself and remember yourself.

Then there are water shamans, like you find in Bali and Hawaii, and different people where they submerge you in water, or they know the languaging of how to communicate to water because they’ve spent a lot of time with the water spirits, so they can ask the water spirits to make things happen to the water. So when they dump it on you or submerge you in it, it creates this very intense experience.

Then there’s fire shamans, who are more present with sun energy, fire energy, heat, sweat, Temazcal, fire ceremonies, sun ceremonies. They understand the fire. They are very keen to the jinn spirits, to the fire salamanders. They know what the fire spirit operates like, and they know how to respect the fire and what this was. So they know the teachings of the fire, so they follow those ways.

Then, there’s air shamans. Air shamans are more governed towards singing songs, speaking in tongues, people call it light language. I stick to the original tone, which is speaking in tongues, being able to play musical instruments that connect with certain frequencies in the body that allow certain spirits to come from the wind and from the air to clean out energies out of your body.

Of course, there’s spirit shamans. And spirit shamans, like myself, we are chosen because we have deep respect for the spirits. So, any spirit—it could be a tree spirit, a flower spirit, an organ, which is also a spirit, your guides, your ancestors, your spirit guides, your spirit helpers, other types of spirits on the planet that are affecting your life—we have connection to them.

We don’t differentiate and play hierarchies. We see everything as a part of the divine kingdom, and so, therefore, we serve humanity based on how we can best support them to recognize their gifts. And spirit shamans are masters of frequency, so we learn how to move energies through people’s bodies very quickly.

We understand the dynamic capacities of merging different fields of energies, such as what an angel really is, what a spirit guide really is, what an ET really is, and how do they merge with your system to create what we call a compound energy frequency that supports you in your evolution, or supports you having healing abilities, or supports you being psychic, as we call it on earth, or supports you in your intuition, and so all of these different components.

Now, to be a shaman is to be a steward to the ancestors and the spirits. That means that we don’t make moves unless we talk to the Great Council. We hear what everyone in the Great Council has to say, and then we make a decision to serve the Great Council without serving our needs and our ideas of saving people or creating this kind of like, it’s me and I’m the healer.

No, it’s never that. I’m not a healer. I am just a person who has a devotion. I’m a shaman. I’m here to serve the Great Council. I’m here to serve the spirits, and if the spirits tell me, like they did, go to Israel in the middle of a war, then I said, okay. I didn’t ask questions. That’s what I do.

It’s not a matter of analyzing them, because analyzation again comes from the distorted masculine mind that can only pull from past experiences. It’s about embracing the feminine and masculine and child aspects of the human potential, and then expanding those awarenesses to be able to access other dimensional fields that the Great Council may ask me to integrate into.

What can someone expect in a one-on-one session with you, whether in person or on Zoom? What happens during the process, and what are you experiencing?

Shaman Durek: What they can expect is that I’m going to hold space for them to witness their powers.

I’m not here to baby people. I’m not here to play games with your—how do I call it—your narratives that you create to make yourself right about whatever it is you want to be right about. I don’t really care about any of those things.

What I care about is what the Great Council says about you, and I refer that information to them. And usually, people come with their ideas of what they desire, and then it becomes something that they never even thought they were going to experience, and so…

Who’s the Great Council, by the way, just to…

Shaman Durek: The Great Council is every being that serves God at its highest level of love, right?

So that can be anyone from Jesus. It can be anyone from the angels, ascended masters, to Orishas. It could be beings from other galaxies that have learned how to evolve into only operating in the will of love. So it’s only beings who support the great will of love.

And then I also will speak to the underworld beings. These are the ones that support you when you are denying your power, when you are scared of things, when you are choosing to hide from your power in the divine light. There are beings that serve the underworld, and their job is to perpetuate those things for you.

So, like, if you have a real issue with money and you look at money as something that’s hard to create or whatever, then you will have beings from the underworld support you. The beings in the light can’t support you on that because they don’t believe in any of those things. They don’t believe in lack. They don’t believe in any of those things. They’re here to hold the highest frequency of truth, beaming into you at the highest level of your being that your being can withstand.

The level of love from them is so powerful that human beings don’t allow all of that love to come in because it literally implodes you. It’s so much love you don’t even believe you could be loved at such a level. So what they do is the Great Council finds ways to help you, to facilitate that, to anchor that, to merge with that, and to be able to believe in that—both in your mind, your emotions, your body, and that little child in you, which is your soul.

The lower-dimensional beings are there to support you in everything that is opposite of you recognizing your power. So if you’re a person who’s like, I’m afraid to get hurt, a lower-dimensional being will come because fear does not support the divine consciousness.

In shamanism, we don’t look at it as a separation. We look at it as what is in alignment for your free will. The greatest gift you’ve been given is this free will. You get to decide what you channel. You can channel from the higher-dimensional realms, or you can channel from the lower-dimensional fields. It’s up to you.

There’s no judgment from God. There’s no judgment from any of the beings in the higher council. There’s no force or expectation that God has of you, or any frustration that God may have of you. That’s all been created by men and women on planet Earth to give God a human-type characteristic—that God would judge you or punish you or do any of these things to you.

No, we do that to ourselves with our own malfunction in thinking and our own display of distrust and non-alliance with the beings that want the best for us. So we either align to God’s will, which is God’s divine plan for you to be happy, or you decide to create that yourself and orchestrate it. Then you learn the pitfalls and the highs and lows of the choices you make and how those things play out in the realm of cause and effect—on what we call a dimensional level.

A dimensional level means through the dimensional fields of consciousness, either it being a high-dimensional field or a low-dimensional field, based upon where you set your energy. And I can always tell within the first two minutes when someone opens their mouth what dimension they’re actually operating from—just by the language they use, the codes they use in their word structure, their body language, their eye dilation, the way they breathe. Everything tells me, Oh, so these are the dimensions that you play in.

Then I can say, Okay, let’s get you to play in a different dimension and see what it feels like. And for some people, it’s like swimming in a different pool of water, right?

So I teach you how to facilitate that so that you become a master of your own self and a leader within your own right. It’s not based in I’m the shaman, and I know everything, because I’m also swimming in different dimensions.

And I think any person who’s in the spiritual realm has to realize that a certain level of humility and humbleness must always be present so that we can always be available for new information that needs to be presented at any given time.

Shaman and two nieces Alexandria Alava (manager) and Natalia Alava (head of media)

For those new to your work, besides your books, where else would you recommend they go to connect with your offerings?

Shaman Durek: I would remove the word work because I’m not here to work. Work is an act of slavery—it comes from the word slavery. I’m here for my service, love, and offerings, because for me, it’s about offering humanity an opportunity to take back their power and truly understand what that means on a soul level.

One of the things my family and I have created is the Lit-Vibe Meditation app. It’s an activation app unlike any other, because it has a community where people share their gifts, do meetups, connect, and feel like part of a family. You can post something, and people from all over the world will respond, creating a deep spiritual conversation about evolution.

The activations in the app awaken parts of your spirit—similar to what I do in private sessions, but accessible to everyone. There’s also a shadow love section, and people are raving about how much it has already shifted their energy. We have doctors and psychologists who share it with their patients, and my family and I have poured so much love into it.

People can also visit ShamanDurek.com to take classes that have never been presented to most people in the world. There’s a 30-day free training in shamanism—you start on the first of the month, and every day for 30 days, you receive a new training.

I also have a podcast called Ancient Wisdom Today, where I do solo episodes and bring on guests. It’s exciting to share offerings that help people increase their gifts and abilities—their natural birthright—and witness the profound nature of humanity unfold itself.

We’re living in what I call “the blackout,” a time when light is being challenged and bringing up old energies that need to be returned to love. I’m just really happy to be a servant to God and to support humanity through this great transformation.