Rewriting Our Hidden Codes | Scott Silverston

Imagine a contract you signed when you were five years old—one that still dictates how you live, work, and love today. You do not remember signing it, but you honor its terms every single day.

In shamanic practice, these are known as invisible agreements. They are subconscious survival codes imprinted upon us during early childhood. For a child in a volatile home, the agreement might be, "I must hyper-observe the room to gauge the mood before I speak." For someone who was constantly dismissed, it might be, "My truth doesn't matter, so I will stay quiet." While these agreements kept us safe when we were deeply vulnerable, in adulthood, they become invisible glass ceilings. They keep us stuck in loops of hypervigilance, emotional numbing, or unbalanced relational dynamics. To break free and step into our full potential, we have to locate these hidden contracts and rewrite them.

• Transcript

  MAGICommons Podcast (00:00)

  Today's guest is Scott Silverstone. He has been a long time practitioner and teacher of the idea of shamanism and his intention is to incorporate basic principles and practices of shamanism in our day to day life.

  The word shamanism is fascinating. Movies portray shamanism in a very dramatic way. However, today's conversation ⁓ is very, I would say, down to earth.

  The focus of this conversation is on the unconscious or invisible agreement that we sign psychologically or emotionally or conditionally within ourselves based on our early experiences in the family, the dynamic of our family or the ancestral influence, the culture, the subculture.

  basically all the environment and how the environment impact our perceptions. And there are some agreement that is not as visible, maybe visible to others, but not visible to ourselves. It can be on a very subconscious level. So the topic here, the intention of this conversation is to

  harness the basic principles and practice of shamanism to help us see and identify our hidden subconscious agreement and then dissolve the agreement and then build new

  is in deeper alignment to our essence

  you may find it still a little bit esoteric, but wait until you hear the conversation and you understand what that

  MAGICommons Podcast (01:54)

  beep beep beep, in front of you lands a spaceship and out walks a friendly alien.

  if alien walks. If you were to use one word, one sound, or one movement to invite the alien to play, or simply say hi, what would you do?

  Scott Silverston (02:07)

  Okay, so we already know it's a friendly alien.

  MAGICommons Podcast (02:10)

  I know, I think so.

  Scott Silverston (02:12)

  just

  say welcome.

  MAGICommons Podcast (02:14)

  Welcome.

  Beautiful.

  Scott Silverston (02:15)

  And I'd

  listen to see what this alien, assuming it was a friendly alien, I'd listen and observe what they wanted and what they bring. Because obviously, being with that amount of ability to travel intergalactically is far more advanced than we are.

  So I don't really have much to, I have more to offer by observing than I do by coming forward.

  MAGICommons Podcast (02:43)

  learning and tuning in and first seek to understand. ⁓ Love it.

  Scott Silverston (02:48)

  Correct. Seeking

  to understand and being observational, right? Because all of life, I believe, is about being in right relationship. And therefore, I can't be in right relationship if I don't know what I'm relating to. It's all relational. Our experience is relational. That's part of the Tai Chi concepts, right? There's no right action unless it's in relation to something else. Balance is always described by...

  the conditions of the world around us. Right? I can be very balanced. I'm very balanced, know, bundled up in heavy layers in the cold winter, but not so much in hot summer. To make an obvious example. Okay. So balance is always relational to the circum to what's happening to our environment, what's happening outside. So here we have something completely unexpected drops into our, into my environment.

  MAGICommons Podcast (03:25)

  You

  you

  Scott Silverston (03:40)

  And I'd be like, ⁓ hi. I'd be a little shy. I think I'd be shy also. How can I help you?

  MAGICommons Podcast (03:48)

  You

  You're looking for someone, something? Beautiful. So I think it lands perfectly into today's conversation. Our focus is the idea of invisible agreement.

  Scott Silverston (03:53)

  Exactly. I'm not the droid you're looking for.

  MAGICommons Podcast (04:10)

  and how invisible agreements shape our psyches and our emotions and ultimately our life and our way of being and living. And it is kind of relational. ⁓ Invisible agreement is kind of like an agreement between two people or one people and the environment. So I'm curious, like when you're speaking about the idea of invisible agreement,

  How do you describe it? What is invisible agreement?

  Scott Silverston (04:39)

  Okay, so I would actually call them subconscious agreements. ⁓ Subconscious agreements, because they're visible from the outside, but not to ourselves. They're often hidden to us because we've been imprinted with that since we were very little. So we've been conditioned to certain things.

  MAGICommons Podcast (04:44)

  subconscious agreement.

  Scott Silverston (04:59)

  And it depends on how you grew up. What was your experience with your caregivers? What was your experience in early childhood? So if someone came from an abusive home or a volatile home where their parents maybe had addiction issues or violence issues, I can guarantee you that that person is going to form an agreement that I need to observe carefully before I ask for anything or something similar like that. Whereas

  A kid who grows up in a safe environment could run in and be like, mommy, mommy, mommy, or daddy, daddy, daddy, I'm hungry, I'm hungry, I'm hungry. That's kind of normal behavior for a three or four year old, right? And they might overstep boundaries a little bit and like try to grab some food. But if that kid gets slapped every time and hit hard or yelled at or punished, they're going to learn really quick not to do that.

  MAGICommons Podcast (05:37)

  Yep.

  Scott Silverston (05:49)

  And then if they're in an environment where it's variable, where sometimes the caregiver is saying, honey, yes, what can I get you? And the other time they're like, go away, you're just such a bother. Right? That's very destabilizing for the child. And so the child is then going to learn to kind of peek their head around the corner and sense what's happening before they make the request. And I believe that's how a lot of highly empathic and sensitive people

  develop their, what I'll call their kinesthetic awareness and become overly empathic to the point where they are super sensitive to everybody else's emotions or feelings because that became a survival mechanism. They couldn't ask, hey mom, are you in a good mood today? Right? Not if they're not almost a volatile alcoholic who would slap them or dad.

  MAGICommons Podcast (06:34)

  No.

  Scott Silverston (06:38)

  How are you doing? They didn't ask that. They had to observe, but sometimes there weren't the physical signs where they couldn't see, so they had feel what was going on. And that feeling awareness is what gave them the idea of is it safe or not safe to get their needs filled from their parent. And as a four or five year old, it's normal to depend on your parents for survival, for nurturance, for...

  food, for love, for edification. These are normal things for young children to depend on their parents for. Unfortunately, not all parents are able to give that to a degree that supports their child. So that's just one example of if you take a child, when we grow up, we grow up with certain agreements about ourselves, the world around us, and our place within the world.

  And that's dependent a lot upon our environment and also how we interpret our environment. And that's why you can have two siblings that may come out very, very differently, even though they have similar circumstances being raised. Cause some might take the attitude of, well, that's their problem, not mine. I know who, you know, and the other one might be, you know, going in therapy for decades, trying to figure it out and taking it all on themselves.

  A lot of times that has to do with the support that the young child has outside of their primary caregiving situation. You see that a lot with children who are in joint custody situations. If they have one parent that's stable and healthy and supportive, they can hold the space for that child so that the child has a perspective that is different than the abuse of them. Or if a child is fortunate and

  you know, has mentors through their schooling or certain social programs, right? That's why, you know, there's, that's why there are these mentorships like big brother, big sister programs where kids who really don't have anything and they don't know anything, and they've never been told they've been good at anything in their life. All of sudden find out that they do have skills. I have a friend, used to run, wilderness.

  education programs for children who were disadvantaged youth who were close to being incarcerated. They had gotten in a lot of trouble. They were kind of the last chance, like 14, 15 year olds. And he was telling me that there's a wilderness trick where if you hold your hand out to the horizon towards the end of the day, each finger width is 15 minutes of sunshine left.

  If the sun's there and this is on the horizon line, you have an hour before the sun sets. It's an estimate, right? But this one particular kid, was, you know, the way his body grew, his arm length and his finger width was exactly perfect so that every finger was exactly 15 minutes on the dot. Now this is a kid who grew up in the inner city. had, he was never, he was always told he was bad at everything, that he was useless. It was the first time, and my friend said it's the first time in my life.

  someone had told him that he was good at something. And he said, you should have seen that kid's face. He changed immediately. And he said, from that point on, once he discovered he was good at something, his whole life changed. Right? That's beautiful. Now that's one agreement and he didn't even change it with shamanism. He changed it through a physical experience that he embodied where he believed, I'm good at something. And he changed that.

  What I do with shamanic spirit medicine is we learn how to uncover these unconscious agreements and we use a method specifically to uncover, release them, change them, and then overwrite them with agreements that help us live into our full potential. In other words, we're updating the program. We're updating the programming.

  MAGICommons Podcast (10:18)

  That's interesting. Yeah. Yeah, that's interesting. You mentioned about, I think I have

  a few more follow-up questions just based on the example that you shared. Are all high sensitivity inside any human being mostly coming from the survival instinct in early childhood or some of the

  Scott Silverston (10:38)

  you

  MAGICommons Podcast (10:45)

  high sensitivity does just come with birth naturally given even if they're born into a comparatively stable wholesome family environment like are there any ⁓

  Scott Silverston (11:00)

  Yeah, let me explain. a great question.

  So I would say that we're all naturally born with these sensitivities. It's all our, it's our natural thing. However, in people who come into a abusive or unstable environment, becomes, it becomes too much. It becomes hypervigilance, right? So it's almost, it becomes more of a fight or flight response rather than a normal healthy sensitivity.

  Unfortunately for many, many people, because of the society that we live in, we've learned to turn it off. So they have a hypo awareness. They don't, they don't actually feel it. They're numb. They're dead to their awareness. So they shut down their intuition. That's not normal. That's not normal. So it's not, it's not that the abusiveness creates the empathic. It creates the hyper vigilance where people turn to that.

  MAGICommons Podcast (11:39)

  Yeah

  Mmm.

  Scott Silverston (11:52)

  inner sensitivity because they have nowhere else to turn and that's the only thing they know. Okay, but in a healthy person who grows up in a healthy society, then that awareness would be fine-tuned, but not to the point of hypervigilance, right? Where it would be awareness without the fight or flight. Does that make sense?

  MAGICommons Podcast (12:11)

  Yeah,

  yeah, and I think it's all about like a degree. So even what we think as healthy families, we all have different family dynamics and that requires us to have different levels of vigilance and not to a level of pathology, but to a level that still is in kind of a big variance.

  that I have observed. And when...

  Scott Silverston (12:41)

  Absolutely.

  I just want to follow with that. Absolutely. And different families are really good at some things and other families are really good at other things. Right? Like you could grow up into a supportive family that really helps you explore your musical and artistic creativity, but they're not very good at business. So you go take a business school class, right? Or you're very good at business and numbers and math, but the creative side is shut down. But that doesn't mean it's

  MAGICommons Podcast (12:51)

  Yeah.

  Exactly.

  Scott Silverston (13:08)

  necessarily unhealthy, it's just we all have different agreements that come from different things. And I just want to clarify one more thing about the healthy sensitivity. What I mean by that is that someone who is very, very, very aware, as aware as someone who is hypersensitive, the difference is that they may intuit that person's angry over there and they may feel that person's anger.

  but it doesn't destabilize or upset them. They don't take it on, right? So I can observe it and be neutral as opposed to observing it and having a reaction to that, whether it's fear or confrontation or drawing it in or needing to, you know, feeling like, I gotta wipe that off of me. doesn't feel, you know, that's the, yeah, it's, right.

  MAGICommons Podcast (13:53)

  Sticky, attached.

  Scott Silverston (13:55)

  Whereas you can observe it and like, okay, that's trying to attach to me. I'm going to dissolve that. That's not mine. That belongs to you. I'm going to allow you to keep that. And if you want help in resolving that, then, you know, happy to consult with you about that, but you have to want it. Right. As opposed to having, as opposed to putting myself in a place where I feel that I have to resolve things for everybody else.

  MAGICommons Podcast (14:11)

  Yeah.

  That is the savior's complex. You've mentioned about the word shamanism and I have been reading about shamanism and this word just keeps coming recently. What is shamanism in a modern sense?

  Scott Silverston (14:21)

  100%.

  MAGICommons Podcast (14:35)

  and how is this potentially related ⁓ to or helpful to everyone? Not just in chaotic environment, but like day-to-day life. How is this relevant?

  Scott Silverston (14:47)

  Sure.

  So let me start with a little bit of history. So what I'll call medicine people have existed on planet Earth, probably as long as humans have existed on planet Earth. But at least 10,000 years, there's records of shamanic practices, or longer, even if you go to Australia, 40,000, 50,000 years. So, and this is cross-cultural. Medicine people...

  shamans have existed throughout all societies, societies that didn't have contact with each other for as long as we have recorded human history. They were the healers, they were the medicine people. They were called different things in different places. No, no, no, I'm talking about witch doctors. Okay. So in Africa, they were called witch doctors.

  MAGICommons Podcast (15:24)

  Imagine some people are talking about doctors. The witchcrafter

  name sounds very not friendly.

  Scott Silverston (15:35)

  No, witchcraft is

  different than witchdoctor. That was a derogatory name given to West African healers by European colonists. Okay, the word shaman comes from Mongolia, actually. And that was their word to describe somebody who goes into what is called the dream time. In Native American societies, they were called

  medicine people, the medicine person. In South America, be Quero or Curandaro, right? Sorry, Curandaro. Different places have different names for us, okay? I'm sure in Asian cultures, there's other names, okay? It doesn't matter the name that you call it. What happens is there's a way to enter into what is called the shamanic consciousness.

  for the dream time. That's in Aboriginal societies in Australia, they call it the dream time. And it's another state of awareness. It's basically theta state. Okay, so when we have our different, we have different brainwave states, our delta is a very quick overview because I know we have to be brief here. Delta state is when we go into deep sleep and we repair our nerves. Theta state is our dreaming awareness state.

  And it's a dreaming awareness state in which healing that's visualized actually sends signals down the nerves and has a physical response in our tissue. So you know, like you've had a dream, especially a lucid dream, and it feels so real that you move and you wake up and you've moved because of your dream? That's the same thing that happens in theta state.

  children very easily move into data state. Then we have alpha state, which is metacognition and you know, really at peace. That's where you try to go in meditation. You try to get into alpha state and beta state is a hyper focus. It's a focus state and high beta state is hyper focused, like coding for example. Okay. And then very high and then very high beta state is fight or flight. Okay.

  MAGICommons Podcast (17:27)

  in the flow state.

  Scott Silverston (17:31)

  So when we're in alpha and beta state, we're primarily using our five regular senses, okay, our hearing, our sight, our logical thinking mind, okay? When we drop into theta state, we go into what's called the spirit mind. And the spirit mind is a different level of perception.

  and we perceive reality in the same way that we perceive reality in a lucid dream. Okay? So basically we have control over our own actions, but we don't have control over the actions of what's around us. It allows us to see and experience the spirit world. What's important about that is it also allows us to access our limbic brain because our limbic brain, our limbic system is where we're imprinted as young children.

  I use the obvious example of trauma because it's easy for somebody to see how we would be imprinted this way. So if I'm imprinted that it's not safe to speak my truth because I'm going to get slapped. Okay. And that happened to me 150 times when I was a kid. Guess what? That person who grew up with that underlying agreement, okay, they're either going to be

  very timid and unable to speak their truth, or they're going to go to the opposite extreme and get up there and be like, I'm telling it, I'm seeing how it is. they, but it's out of balance because it's being driven from a place of actual wounding. When we access shamanic consciousness, we're able to overwrite those agreements that are founding, that underlie our behaviors and our patterns.

  and our belief systems. And so we can get to a different agreement rather than it's not safe to speak my truth or the only way I'll be heard is if I scream, right? Right? It might come into something about, you know, I speak my truth and to those who want to hear it and to others, I allow them to keep their truth. Right? So it allows me to speak my truth clearly and

  MAGICommons Podcast (19:21)

  Mm. Mm. Yeah.

  Scott Silverston (19:34)

  in a strong and grounded way, but I don't have to force my truth on somebody else. Right? That's more balanced. That's more healthy. So with, by entering Shamanic consciousness, now I want to go back because there's many ways in which Shamanism has been used over the years in different cultures. You're talking about a system that's used in pretty much every indigenous culture for tens of thousands of years. there's going to be a lot of variety.

  MAGICommons Podcast (19:58)

  So it's like optimize, unlock our potential in another way through entering into this dream state and renegotiate this imprint of unconscious agreement, therefore has the potential to unlock us from maybe a glass ceiling that we're feeling, whether it's in life or in business.

  Can you help us maybe do like a live demonstration? What are some most common demand or request to release this unconscious agreement that you hear?

  and maybe you share a few and then we can pick maybe one and then you can walk us live through this through this guided experience.

  Scott Silverston (20:43)

  So I can't really walk you through it live because what that entails is actually going into the dream time and reading what's inside an individual and that would be too personal, right? To do it live. It's very vulnerable. It's very vulnerable and I wouldn't want to expose somebody to that on a live broadcast. But I can give you some examples.

  MAGICommons Podcast (20:55)

  ⁓ I see. So it's more almost like a hypnotic. That'd too personal. yeah.

  Scott Silverston (21:11)

  Okay, so first of all, what happens is we have hundreds, thousands of these agreements. Okay, the common ones are I'm not good enough. And it comes in many forms. It's very common one, okay? It's a very common one. And the other common ones are men are this and women are that. You fill in the blank, it doesn't matter what it is. Okay, we have it. Another, and then there's societal agreements.

  MAGICommons Podcast (21:21)

  That's very common.

  Very common.

  Yep.

  Scott Silverston (21:36)

  And there's some pretty nasty ones out there, like it's okay to get what you want through violence.

  or domination. Money is power. I take what I want by having power over others. These are the things that often underlie. So when you say what are some of the common requests, the requests often don't come in with the agreement because they're not aware of what the agreement is. It's running in the background, it's subconscious. So by definition, we're not aware of our own agreements.

  until we enter the Dreamtime and find out exactly what's running it. That's why it's hard for me to give you a live demo without actually working on an individual here. Right? So, but I'll walk you through the basic process. If somebody might come in and they're having an issue with another individual and they're feeling that that individual is infringing on their boundaries.

  and you keep you start you ask some questions and then you go into the shamanic state of consciousness you go into the journey and you feel where you're shown i'm shown where in their body is this being held where in their energy body and oftentimes what happens is people come in and they say you know i've been feeling sick lately or i've been feeling a pain here or something like that and so

  then what you do is you track that. And for me, that tracking experience is I will perceive a density or a blockage in someone's energy body. And then I will follow that and it's almost like a line or a rope. And I can pull on that and I can backtrack it. And I backtrack it and I'm shown different events in a person's life.

  and they'll be maybe a divorce or a breakup and we keep going back and back and back and back in their history to things that happened when they were in grade school or high school and and then eventually we get to the point where oh you are five years old and this happened to your brother and you took on xyz because of what happened to your brother for example your brother had a trauma

  And you perceived it, but nobody else in your family did. And it was urgent and you tried to alert your family, but your family didn't believe you. And then that pattern repeated itself over and over because sometimes you have people who are highly perceptive, but other people dismiss it because they don't want their kid and they don't want to confront it. Now that person grows up and they are like, nobody listens to me. What I have to say isn't important.

  you block me. None of that's actually true. It's just their experience because in their family that happened. And then you get to the whatever that agreement is, is that, you know, for example, what I have to say, you know, even though I'm right, nobody believes me. And then you're able to lift that off along with the stuck energy because if there wasn't an emotional, it's the emotional charge that locks it into play.

  So if there wasn't emotional charge, it wouldn't be stuck there. And so the emotions need to be released as well. And we talked, while we were doing the setup, we talked a little bit about dissolving things in the energy body as part of like a meditation. Well, this is another level of that where in the shamanic consciousness, you're able to, in the dream time, you're able to perceive where that emotional energy is dropped and dissolve it and dissolve the cord.

  MAGICommons Podcast (24:42)

  Yeah.

  Scott Silverston (24:58)

  that link it, that tie it back to the events of the past. Okay, once that happens, then as you are guiding us to start, then you refill with light. Okay, but what, in the shamanic sense, what we're bringing back is not just light, but it's our own life force energy that was lost at the point of trauma. That's sometimes called soul retrieval. Okay, in shamanism they'll call that soul retrieval, but it's basically light that was lost at a point in time.

  not just general light from the creator, it's the light that was within us that we let go of and replaced with these stones, this darkness, these blockages, these densities.

  MAGICommons Podcast (25:33)

  So

  it's calling back our lights into the body. ⁓

  Scott Silverston (25:37)

  Correct. Correct.

  Right? So we're releasing and then we're bringing back. And then once that's come back to us, then we go, okay, now what is a new agreement that overwrites the old agreement that allows us to move forward in a healthy way, live into our full potential? Okay. My truth is important. Or I know my truth is important. I stand grounded within it. I speak it with clarity to those who...

  are open to receiving it.

  much more balanced. Now that's my thinking mind remembering what's happened in numerous sessions, but that doesn't mean that's the agreement someone's going to get because I can't think of it. If I think about it, it's not, it's not actually working. It's not, it's not the real deal. Okay. So that's what

  MAGICommons Podcast (26:19)

  Yeah, a lot of times

  the thought stays in the brain and it does not sink into the body. the embodiment is the key.

  Scott Silverston (26:29)

  Exactly, embodiments in the key. And that's the difference between hypnotherapy and shamanic spirit medicine is that in hypnotherapy, someone might put someone under hypnosis to help them stop smoking, for example, and they'll go smoking his bags. But that's their thinking mind saying what they think will help that person. In shamanic spirit medicine, it's not my thinking mind. It's all being shown to me in the dream time. And it's being, and I'm channeling.

  in or whoever is doing the healing is channeling in the agreement for that person and it's unique to that person. Each agreement is unique to each individual. I don't necessarily share agreement. We might be very similar, but because we all have unique imprinting, we all have unique ways in which we've grown in this world, we all adapt that differently. And what you said about embodiment is so important. It's not enough just to think about it. It's like thinking about relaxing is not relaxing.

  Thinking about eating your... Exactly. Thinking about eating dinner is not tasting the dinner. They're two different things. They're just two different things, okay? And it's the same, we have to embody it. And once we embody it, so much changes in our life. So much changes. Because what happens, it goes from this point of... Have you ever gone in a situation where...

  MAGICommons Podcast (27:19)

  Yeah, thinking about relaxing, make me feel more nervous. Like, how come I'm still not relaxed yet?

  Yeah.

  Scott Silverston (27:45)

  You go, this time I'm going to react differently, this time I'm going to respond differently, and you try to psych yourself up to doing it different. And then what happens?

  MAGICommons Podcast (27:52)

  Same thing.

  Scott Silverston (27:53)

  Same thing, exactly. So if you

  have to yourself up, it's probably not happening. On the other hand, once you shift your agreements, things are completely, you don't even try. It's all of a sudden you find yourself responding differently. And now I'll give you the example that I think you were asking for, but it took me a while for it to pop into my head for the right one. So about a year two ago, some...

  someone bought the property next door to mine and he's a developer and he decided he was gonna cut down the mango tree, a very big, beautiful old mango tree that reaches over onto our yard. you know, laws in Hawaii are that you cannot cut a branch that reaches over into your neighbor's yard. You actually can't, that's actually illegal. You can't cut something on my side of the property line. But I was out and I came back and he had sent

  He hired a crew and the crew had very quickly, without asking permission to come onto our property, cut the branches that were and dropped them onto our side. And so my wife went out and said, Hey, what are you doing? And you need to stop. And they started yelling at my wife. And one of the workers threatened her and said, lady, you got to get out of the way or you're going to get hurt. You're going to drop the, we're going to drop branches on you, which of course is absolutely not acceptable. And so.

  You know, my older self would have been very confrontational with those people. And, but I, what happened was when my wife called me, was out and told me what's happening. I need to, I need to, this is to escalate a lot. I need to make sure that this gets resolved. I'm going to do a journey and I, which is the shamanic journey. And I'm going to see what I need to do to heal inside myself. And so.

  I healed, I don't remember the old agreement, which is good, because that was the agreement that would have made it escalating and confrontational. And I went over there and I was able to talk to them. And it was basically, my new agreement was like, I'm safe within, you my sacred container, my sacred space is inviolable, it belongs to me and me alone. Okay? In other words, nobody's going to threaten me.

  So I went over there and I went to talk to them and now there's, you know, here I am, kind of short guy, smaller guy standing in my flip flops and shorts and four dudes in boots and work gear and helmets holding chainsaws. Actually five. And I walk over to them like, hey guys, what's going on? They're like, they're like right up in my face. I'm like, who's in charge? I want to talk to who's in charge. And they're like, what do you want? I'm like, well, you you threatened my wife. That's not okay.

  And they're like, literally they're cursing at me, they're threatening me. And I just said, I'm just trying to have a conversation guys. I'm just trying to have a conversation. So what you're doing right now isn't okay. You need to have a conversation with me. I'm not threatening you. Just put down your aggression and let go of it. And then the owner came over of the tree trimming company and he, he saw that I was very relaxed.

  And said, Hey, let's have a conversation. told them all to back off. went over to my property. invited him over. said, look, this is what you're doing. You dropped trees on my fence. My fence has been broken because of these. And you threatened my wife. Like that's just not okay. He goes, okay, I totally understand any of these guys here. If anyone did anything to their ladies, they'd be really upset. Thank you for talking to me in this way. You know, we're going to, you know, and it became this really peaceful. talked for half an hour.

  super loving conversation. He brought his son over and made his son apologize to my wife. And it was really funny because his son was all like this, you know? And it looked like he was this guy. He looked like he was a puppy being dragged by the ear. He was like, I'm sorry, miss But you see, otherwise it could have become this really big shouting, screaming. And long story short, that guy was his

  friends is a neighbor of and friends with the developer who bought the property and he told the developer hey, I don't know what you're doing, but you need to converse with your neighbors and ask their permission before you're doing that because that reflects badly on me if we're not doing that. He told me I'm really sorry. I had no idea that you hadn't been informed. And you know that he's supposed to inform you and he's supposed to ask your permission. Well, you can't put the tree back together.

  But you know, he basically walked, and then they walked off the job and left it the tree would grow back. But then he hired someone else to actually take the rest of the tree out. But after talking to us, he refused to finish. So it was very powerful to see how that transformation occurred. So I hope that gives you an idea of the process of how that shifted.

  MAGICommons Podcast (32:26)

  Thank you for sharing

  this beautiful story and I've been playing this visually in my mind and it's so powerful. Like sometimes I think in this world, maybe also historically, we... some people feel empowered when they overpower somebody else and this theme has been played everywhere.

  and within family systems, within organizational systems, within national, like, societal systems, and the way that you...

  revise the agreement is simple yet so powerful. You mentioned something about

  inviolable, inviolatable. You have, how do you say that? You have your

  Scott Silverston (33:11)

  I said my secret

  space is inviolable. It belongs to me and me alone.

  MAGICommons Podcast (33:15)

  your sacred

  space is inviolable. And what else do you say?

  Scott Silverston (33:20)

  It

  belongs to me and me alone.

  MAGICommons Podcast (33:22)

  It belongs to me and me alone. think just this simple, just this simple new agreement establishes the boundary gracefully, brings back the harmony.

  peacefully and also as you present yourself with people who are trying to or intending to overpower you you just you just be you just hold space and be and I think this is such a beautiful and empowered way of being

  is not by overpowering as they do, but by holding your space. ⁓

  Scott Silverston (34:01)

  Exactly.

  Instead of going force on force, it's staying, I'm standing my ground. Totally, totally different, totally different. And it's totally different thing. And that part you say about empower, overpowering is it's really important to understand this from an energetic perspective. People try to penetrate our sacred space, our sacred energetic space. And by when they do that,

  MAGICommons Podcast (34:06)

  you're standing on ground.

  Scott Silverston (34:23)

  They try and it's a lot of it's unconscious right bullying behavior is very unconscious for most people okay, it's a learned habit and Basically, they're looking at energy Unconsciously as a zero-sum game If you have energy that and I take it more for me and less for you That's not accurate. There's an infinite from our perspective an infinite amount of

  MAGICommons Podcast (34:41)

  I don't. ⁓

  Scott Silverston (34:49)

  energy for a human being to source through creator and mother earth. So the difference is that I create, I connect vertically through the crown of my head to creator, bringing that energy down through the soles of my feet and through my root chakra into mother earth. Pulling both in from above and below is infinite source energy, releasing below if I need to, releasing above if I need to, anything that doesn't belong. Horizontal connections.

  right, between me and you, between me and any other human, that those connections can be defined in multiple ways. They can be balanced or imbalanced. Okay? If they're imbalanced, energy could flow towards me or it could flow towards you. Okay? One of the things that I do in my level two training, which is called Shamanic Self-Mastery, is I help people walk through all the relations in their life.

  and analyze from an energetic perspective, are their relations balanced? Help them to see where the energy is imbalanced. Now, most of the people who come to my training, they're givers more than they're takers. Okay? you know, honestly, people who are bullying and taking, they don't want to do personal growth and development work. They're not interested in spiritual development. They're interested in taking what they can get. So obviously, you're already...

  MAGICommons Podcast (35:57)

  That's true. That's true. If not you, somebody

  else.

  Scott Silverston (36:03)

  the majority of people who are interested in what I do, they're not coming for, they're coming from a perspective of they've been giving and giving and giving and over giving a lot of times and they need to get that in balance. So we analyze, I help them analyze all of their relationships through the shamanic spirit medicine framework and look at where is the energy out of balance and how do I put it back into balance. And what I tell people is look,

  If someone says to you, my God, I'm so sorry, I didn't want to do that. Then they're your friend. Then they're in right relationship. They might have a bad habit, but they're doing their best. If someone comes back at you with denial, deflection, and blame, it's a whole different story. And then there's methods that I teach where we're able to recall our life force energy from those experiences.

  and put those relationships back into balance. And sometimes balance is no more contact. Right? Because why do you want to have contact with someone who's being parasitic? And it's my belief that we all give agency to spiritual forces on planet Earth. We have a body. We can act in the physical. Spiritual forces don't have bodies. Okay? Kind of obvious. Okay? They need

  beings, human beings with bodies, to influence the physical world. Okay, so we give agency, whether we're conscious of it or not, we give agency to spiritual forces. So, let me finish, if I become conscious of that, then I choose to give agency only to benevolent spiritual forces. If I'm not conscious of it, I don't know what's channeling through me.

  And then you have the... and so for most people, when you talk about a bullying energy or parasitic energy where they have power over, what they're doing is they're giving agency to a spiritual force of domination or domination and submission. That's parasitic. Then you have those, when I say the special few, who consciously invoke those parasitic forces.

  And those are the ones that we have to be actually very careful about. Because they're the people who consciously use those. Most people are unconscious. They don't know. They're just programmed. They have these agreements. And they just go through it because it's been passed down to them. But some people become aware. They become spiritually aware and spiritually powerful, but not in a benign way, in a malevolent way. So it's important to understand not all spiritual practices are benevolent.

  healing. Some of them are not, and there are people who cultivate it for power, for greed, for the wrong reasons. Now, of course, over time, those people will expire in a really negative way, because when you invoke something parasitic, eventually you're no longer of use to it. And there's your answer to what happens to you. Okay, but they can be very... those types of people can be quite destructive and disruptive.

  while they're operating in the world. So, yeah.

  MAGICommons Podcast (38:58)

  How

  would you describe the spirit that you mentioned? are these? Are these like another layer of agreements? Are these streams of consciousness? how do... what are these things? Spirit...

  Scott Silverston (39:10)

  Thank

  It's

  actually a life form that doesn't have a body.

  And some are benevolent and some are not. Okay, so, you know, people will say, oh, you know, after someone dies, for example, they connect with their dead relatives. That's spirit. Okay, they no longer have a body. Now, they're not necessarily, most dead relatives are not necessarily wise or enlightened or even benevolent. They might be benevolent towards their descendant, but not to everybody else.

  MAGICommons Podcast (39:22)

  interesting.

  Scott Silverston (39:45)

  Some aren't even benevolent to their descendants. I teach in healing our ancestry course, in which we go back and we heal the relationships with our ancestors that some of them aren't nice people. I had ⁓ one of my students and he's like, yeah, I went to see my grandma who passed on, I can't remember if it's his mom's side or other side.

  MAGICommons Podcast (39:58)

  You

  Scott Silverston (40:08)

  And the first thing she said was, F you, what are you doing here? You ruined my daughter's life by being born. And it was, yeah, it was his mother's mother. And I'm like, whoa, that's heavy. I've never heard anybody say that. Okay. Usually there's other stuff, but there were other people, you know, they connected to an ancestor who was in the mafia and they had a clear on who was like a grandparent or a great grandparent. And they were like,

  not just like a side person, but like a big, you know, organized criminal. And he's like, I don't want, and this is, this person is one of the nicest, kindest, most generous, honorable people I've ever met. And you wouldn't even know that he had that ancestor, but he did. And it was, and it actually, his, you know, sensing of that when he was younger drove him to become not that. Okay. But it still wasn't helpful. Okay.

  But not all spiritual beings were human. There are non-human spiritual forces as well. That's a whole other level. So it's important when we resolve these types of situations that we're very clear about who we want to work with in the spirit world and what we want to give agency to in the physical world. And then as we resolve things like our ancestry,

  MAGICommons Podcast (41:19)

  Mm.

  Scott Silverston (41:22)

  You know, most shamans through most indigenous cultures worked with their ancestors and their ancestors were shaman. Okay, and it was passed. This is why it was passed down. This is why some people say you have to be born a shaman to be a shaman because it comes from your lineage. That's not true. That was that had to do with the way small bands, know, humans used to live in small clan groups, 80, 100 people.

  mostly nomadic, up to 300 people. You have 300 people in a clan group, maybe you have 120 men, 120 women, and 60 children. And of that 240 adults, maybe 40 of them are elders. So now you have 200 people who do the work of the tribe. You can't have 200 shamans. You gotta hunt, you gotta build houses, you gotta do agriculture, you gotta farm, you gotta...

  take care of the kids, right? So one or two were the healers, the medicine people. But that didn't mean that other people didn't have the ability. They did. It just wasn't their specialty. Everyone knew how to, you know, hunt in North America. Everybody knew how to hunt or gather what food was there. Everyone knew how to make basic shelter, but there were some people who were better. So it was generally passed down in some cultures on the family line and other cultures based on their dream time visions.

  Okay. However, when we get, that doesn't mean that it's not, you have to be born into it. Any, it's accessible to everybody who wants to, who wants to work with right intention. However, when you get to the more advanced levels, and that's why my ancestry course is one of my, it's called an elective or graduate class. I want people to finish the apprenticeship program first. We connect back to our

  ancestors who were shaman, but it might have been a thousand years ago or two thousand years ago. Right? And it gives us a strong connection that we might not have otherwise having grown up in modern society. Right? A lot of us, we grew up in a modern society. We feel kind of disconnected from our families. Some people have strong family systems. Some people don't. But, you know, our value, the world's changing so quickly, our values change.

  often, know, generation to generation. And if you came from a culture that had agreements around things that don't really apply or aren't functional in today's society, it creates quite a conflict, okay, of moving into, especially like in America where we have a lot of people coming from many, different backgrounds. my family came here three generations ago. Other families came, you know, this generation or the generation previously.

  And you can see, you can trace back into the ancestry, the way that they adapted or didn't adapt to American culture. Some families kept their languages and their customs. Others, they tried to get rid of it and blend right in to assimilate. But there was always that push and pull between the older generation that was born in the old country or came from the old country, and first generation and second generation who are fully quote.

  American, right, or Americanized, right? None of that is, you can go back. So a lot of times we feel very disconnected from our families. And in Europe too, where our ancestry was often replaced when the Roman armies colonized in the, you know, and disrupted all the pagan cultures and all the goddess worship and all the Earth-based cultures there, they disconnected people from their ancestry. They replaced it with the...

  MAGICommons Podcast (44:25)

  Yeah.

  Scott Silverston (44:48)

  church's ancestry, ancestral line, this is your new father, this is your new mother, okay, you have a holy father and a holy mother, you don't have your own ancestry isn't important, right? But when we root back, and we might have to go back dozens or even hundreds of generations to get to these shamanic ancestors that want to work with us, it gives us a very strong foundation through our blood, through our bones, through our

  it's a different thing. So that's another level of healing that's more advanced level of study because we have to get through the first levels of just what are the agreements, what are our habits, what are we letting in, are we able to hold our container, how do we protect and cultivate and safeguard our sacred space, how do we access shamanic consciousness readily. And I want to just say something also about that.

  that there are cultures in which they use psychotropic substances like ayahuasca, et cetera, et cetera, to access the spirit mind. I don't do that. We do it through drumming, At rhythmic entrainment. So it's through rhythmic entrainment. You were mentioning earlier about going to listen to some shamanic music. Okay, it's rhythmic entrainment. When we entrain with the rhythm, then we're able to relax.

  MAGICommons Podcast (45:50)

  Drumming, I love drumming.

  Scott Silverston (46:04)

  we're able to train ourselves to sink into theta state and we're able to access this level of consciousness, the advantages of that are many over using a psychotropic substance. Okay, because first of all, I have responsibilities in the world. I've got a child that goes to school. Okay, I want to be able to do this every day. If I was only doing my healing work by ingesting Iowas...

  Forget it, I could see maybe one person, two people a month, or two people a week.

  MAGICommons Podcast (46:33)

  Yeah, that

  will probably create addiction as a byproduct and that's kind of a new enforced agreement with the substance between the body and...

  Scott Silverston (46:38)

  Exactly. The

  new ingredient is I can only reach the state of consciousness through this gatekeeper, this substance. Okay, it also is really debilitating on the physical body and you don't own it, you can't turn it on and off. The difference with the drum is I can do a very deep personal healing or deep session on somebody. For me, my personal journey is 15, 30 minutes, my sessions are longer, know, hour, hour and a half, finish.

  And then I can go pick up my kid from school and meet with their teacher or go to the bank or right. can go very easily back and forth into normal waking consciousness to material flesh reality and the spirit world, shamanic consciousness. I can move back and forth at will. Okay. If you need a substance to do that, it's not at will. So that's a really important distinction. So the first, that's the very first thing that we do is learn how to do that.

  Then we learn how to scan our energy bodies. We learn about ethics and right relationship. We learn about protecting and safeguarding our sacred space. We learn to journey to the upper and lower worlds. Then we move into a whole course on agreements and on looking at these patterns. We start slowly. We work slowly from the outside in and we go, what are my life patterns?

  Where are people who have disrespected me and where is the energy? How are my relationships? How about communication in my home? How about boundaries? How am I in love and intimate relationship? What about health and healing? We look at is there a place where me being out of balance in spiritual energy realm has caused any health issues? We do a journey called the wisdom of illness. Sometimes we have an illness and it's trying to tell us something.

  ⁓ Look your boundaries are being violated. That's why you're feeling ill. Okay, then we get into the part of actually shifting the agreements We do all of that and learning how to do that on ourselves learning to What I say command our dreaming. Okay, so we can command our dreaming Right because we dream whether we like it or not. We dream we dream ourselves into being every single day Okay, and we dream ourselves into being based on our agreement

  MAGICommons Podcast (48:33)

  mental dreaming

  Scott Silverston (48:45)

  Okay, so when I see somebody, imagine yourself as a 20 year old man and you see an attractive girl and you wanna go over and you wanna introduce yourself and maybe ask her out for a date, right? Now, I'm dreaming of myself as someone who's hated and unattractive. That's very different than if I'm dreaming of myself as someone who is a kind, loving person who's interested in

  in bonding with someone and that's also very different than dreaming of myself as a player. Right? It's like, so how I dream myself is going to affect my actions in day to day life. Okay? When I learn to command my dreaming, what that means is that I get into my limbic brain through entering shamanic consciousness and I reprogram my dreaming into right relationships. So I'm respectful of others.

  MAGICommons Podcast (49:16)

  Yeah.

  Scott Silverston (49:35)

  you know, connecting with creator and mother earth, I'm sovereign, my sacred space is protected and safeguarded, and I'm not bullying others, I'm not taking other people's energy, I'm living in right relationship, is what we call right relationship or right alignment. Once we get all that, then we go into the next level of how we do the healing work on others, okay? So.

  distance healing, psychopomp, extraction, soul retrieval, session work, entity removal, all that stuff that you'll see out there on the internet a lot of and a lot of things written about. Unfortunately, people teach that without the foundation. And that's dangerous because you have to have the foundation within yourself. Or else what's going to happen is it's going to penetrate through those vulnerabilities that you haven't addressed. Okay.

  So that's what we do. And then I have cultivating the energy body to help us meditative, qigong, nigong based work to keep ourselves vital and strong and protect our container because in this work, there's a lot of, not a lot of movement, right? Other than drumming. So we need to have.

  MAGICommons Podcast (50:38)

  Yeah, that's true. Well, I do try to

  dance with the drum. I do feel like if you incorporate free flow body movement without judgements and dance and express through your body, that is how I see Charmin as a meditative effort.

  Scott Silverston (50:59)

  Well that's actually

  important because dancing and singing is a part of shamanism traditionally. And traditionally that's done in what you said a free flow movement, not choreographed. And it's done, some cultures do have it choreographed, but you can go in a free flow movement. It's done to help let go of our thinking mind. And it signals to our, it's like a ritual.

  it signals to us it's time to let go of our thinking mind and it's time to come into our spirit mind. And then when we're in our spirit mind, then we can go into the shamanic state of consciousness. So it's a very important part. Nonetheless, even if you dance around, you don't get a lot of exercise. And so we do an internal art course to help strengthen the energy body and the physical body.

  MAGICommons Podcast (51:41)

  That's true.

  Scott Silverston (51:48)

  and prepare ourselves for higher spiritual work. Okay, it's important that our energy body and our nervous system is prepared for that work. So that's one of the other things that I do. And we do all of that before we even get to the ancestry stuff. So I just wanted to give you an idea of how this works. Yeah.

  MAGICommons Podcast (52:07)

  Yeah,

  as you were speaking, I know like I came from a background where like everything is scientific and we need to measure it, we need to show it, we need to... But I constantly feel called through the other side of my psyche or my beingness is something related to spirit work, spiritual, maybe emotional, something that's bigger than our body.

  Scott Silverston (52:16)

  you

  you

  MAGICommons Podcast (52:32)

  bigger than the planet earth, something that's eternal, it's always there and whenever we talk about the idea of shamanism, I just feel excited. Like I just feel something in me is saying yes and even though I've in my life or in my visible family tree, we don't have anybody who does shamanism work or things like that.

  But whatever this word is spoken, just feel... I don't know, I feel this energy. I feel very energetic. I feel like it's something closer to something deep. yeah, this topic that we're having is very interesting. And I think our audiences who may...

  may or may not, it is their free will. So who may resonate with this idea of shamanism and how we as modern human beings can, through strategic layered work, we'll be able to at least be our own shaman, be a normal shaman for us and ourselves to...

  process and be resilient and reborn and renegotiate whatever unconscious contract that we've been collecting and forming and culminating and it gives us a chance to born anew. It gives us a chance to stay within true alignment with our deepest essence, deepest calling and deepest meaning for being here.

  Scott Silverston (54:04)

  you

  MAGICommons Podcast (54:06)

  ⁓ in this body human form. And that gives me a lot of hope.

  maybe by us and everyone who stand our own ground, protect our own sacred space, we are able to cultivate, I would use this word, energetic points on the planet earth to help anchoring in a way of true harmony and true flourishing aside from everything else that everybody is doing.

  I feel like this is what I desire to see and that's what I desire to embody. And I get a sense that some of our audiences were resonate with this as well. It's such an important work that you're doing, Scott, ⁓ with this shamanic work. Yeah.

  Scott Silverston (54:52)

  Thank you. Thank

  you. I appreciate that. And I think it's important to note that there isn't a lot of modeling of people safeguarding their sacred space in a peaceful way. I know, you know, I grew up in a good family, but I didn't have that modeling. I had to cultivate it. I had to learn it.

  Okay? And I think a lot of people are good at grow up in good caring families, but we don't have that model. Whereas, you know, maybe other cultures and other times and places had different models of being in a peaceful and respectful of our own sovereign container or energetic container. And the more we can model that for others and that direct connection spiritual.

  spiritual connection, energetic connection to Mother Earth and Creator directly without intermediaries. For each individual, that's huge. There's a lot of people who don't have that model, so they don't know what to do. They don't like it the way it is right now, but they don't know and they hear the ideas and the words like, sounds good, but you can't be it if you don't see a model for it. First, it's very hard to...

  MAGICommons Podcast (55:46)

  Yeah.

  Scott Silverston (56:07)

  to be it if you haven't received a model for it. It's very, the other thing you said too about coming from a scientific background, my daughter reminds me that math and science are just means of describing our perceptions of the world around us. And I was like, and she's a math and she's gonna be a math and science major. I mean, she's like a whiz kid with that stuff. And I was.

  pretty naturally gifted in math and science, but not like her. She's like way, way faster than I am with it. And I was like, that's interesting. That's an interesting, it's true. That's an interesting way to look at it. And so it's hard to measure something if you don't even know it's there. If you're not conscious that you're running those agreements, how do you even measure when you change them? You can't, but.

  The way we measure it is the effectiveness. When someone comes in and they have a session and they go, my God, that changed my life. When someone comes in and they do a course and they go, thank you so much, that changed my life. That's my scientific measurement. It may be subjective. There's no double blind studies about what if they did something else. Not yet.

  MAGICommons Podcast (56:50)

  Yeah.

  Scott Silverston (57:12)

  But the fact that it changes people's life for the better, put their, you know, and I see people, they go on track and they're like, I was going over here and I've been off track struggling with stuff for decades. And all of a sudden they're empowered and they're living their truth and they're standing in their power. And they're not, they're not in self deception anymore. Right? Cause a lot of us, we live in self deception. it's okay. Someday I'll do this. Someday I'll do that. And then all of a sudden you look back and you didn't do it. the window of opportunity.

  And that's one of the big things about shamanic spirit medicine is it turns us around. Right? Most of us, we live life looking backwards and it turns us around, allow us to look forward about what we do, exercise where we look into the future and I go, okay, take a look. What's your possible and probable futures right now, right? Because nothing's in stone. There's probable futures and there's possible futures.

  MAGICommons Podcast (57:50)

  now

  Scott Silverston (58:06)

  But you don't know, right? Somebody grows up, I like to this example. I went to school and there were a lot of very privileged kids at my school, up with a lot of money, a lot of financial backing, family backing. Not all of them succeeded. Some of them ended, even financially, some of them ended up not doing very well. Some of them, you know, kind of went downhill.

  And then I met another guy one time through business and he grew up in an orphanage in Istanbul in Turkey, East Turkish. He grew up in an orphanage. Well, he ended up selling his company for something like 30 million dollars in the mid 90s. Okay, that's mid 90s money, okay, at a zero or two. And now what are the odds of that person? That was not his probable future when he was a two-year-old in an orphanage.

  compared to the two-year-old who was already having trust accounts set up for him or her. Now, I'm not saying that money is the begin or end all or the goal or even the measuring stick of success, but just in terms of probability and possibility, that person growing up in an orphanage in Istanbul had a much lower probability of being a multimillionaire at age 45 than that other kid who had trust.

  set up for him already, but ended up becoming a drug addict and having the family have to put his money in other forms of protection so that he didn't waste it or kill himself. But they crisscross paths. So we have probable futures and we have possible futures. And so I ask people to look at that. What are your possibilities right now? What are your probabilities right now? And then we look at what we can do to change it. Again, with the agreement.

  again in the spirit world with the spirit mind because it's not a thinking thing. There are thinking things that can be done. We're not disposing of the logic mind completely. We're just trying to balance them. What's happened in our society, in modern world, become so thinking oriented, logic brain oriented, that we've discarded the spirit mind. And then, of course, in reaction, you have people who are out of balance the other way and they go, it's all spirit.

  I'll just let it all happen. can I sleep on your couch? No, that doesn't work either. Okay. You still have to deal with the material physical reality. It's not all spirit. It's part spirit and part material. We would balance the two. It's part spirit mind. It's part logic mind. So we get everybody balanced and then we're able to move forward. And then we're looking forward to a life where we are able to take control.

  MAGICommons Podcast (1:00:09)

  Yeah

  Scott Silverston (1:00:37)

  of our destiny rather than being sucked into the destiny that is pulled that we're being pulled into by the society around us. We have power to define ourselves and our future. That's very powerful. That's powerful. It's powerful.

  MAGICommons Podcast (1:00:51)

  Yeah, and that's radical

  agency. It's the ultimate form of agency. It's beautiful. As we move into the final ⁓ part of this conversation, I'm curious when you were say 11 years old or even younger, what did you enjoy creating or playing?

  Scott Silverston (1:00:56)

  Correct.

  to affect the world.

  you

  MAGICommons Podcast (1:01:14)

  or doing ⁓ so much that time just disappeared for you.

  Scott Silverston (1:01:18)

  ⁓ yeah. God, I used to play with my baseball card. I used to organize them. Or I play sports with my friends. ⁓ Or we play Dungeons and Dragons, which was just a board game back then. That's it. Well, remember, I mean, I'm a little old. We didn't really have video games. Maybe we got Atari at that point. I don't even know if Atari had come out. Right?

  MAGICommons Podcast (1:01:23)

  my god!

  lives.

  Very physical, very sporty.

  You

  Scott Silverston (1:01:44)

  There are pinball

  machines. I like to play pinball machines and I like to go to baseball games and play ball with my dad, excuse me, or with my friends. yeah, being physically engaged was, was, that was what is, was for me at that time.

  MAGICommons Podcast (1:01:48)

  Okay.

  beautiful and also like as you were doing your work right it does take it does require a lot of ability to open space open space for yourself open space for others groups and individual mmm what kind of how do you conjure up or how do you source your creative vitality

  to fuel the work that you do, the space that you hold, the path that you help to open.

  Scott Silverston (1:02:31)

  Yep. So basically through what I teach in my energy-bound courses, I have a background in Tai Chi, Nei Gong, internal arts, and I've been practicing for 23 years now. And so I do that practice every day. And that is, as you said, it's physical. I keep it and it helps my mind very much.

  Like I'm in the present moment. I have to set alarms because otherwise, you know, I'll start practicing like this morning I was, I better set an alarm or I'm going to practice right through our meeting time. Right. My sense of time is just, it's not there. that gives me the vibe. Yeah, exactly. Stop. Okay. Got it. Yeah. Otherwise, otherwise it's like 10 o'clock and I've missed the call. Okay. So that's one thing I also love.

  MAGICommons Podcast (1:03:04)

  Hahaha

  Similar.

  you

  Scott Silverston (1:03:18)

  spend time in nature. I like doing extended backcountry trips without any technology at all. And I've just connect with the earth and the land around me, the water, the ocean, the sky, rivers, observe birds and animals and yeah, that's so rejuvenating and healing. Look, the more we are on

  Technology, the more blood, the more energy comes up to our brains. That's okay. But we also need to balance that by bringing down into our physical body, our feet, into the ground. So this is what, and through the emptiness, right? When I empty, we all have long to-do lists. Okay, when I go out there, it gives me permission to forget about my to-do lists. And guess what happens? All these creative ideas come flowing in.

  And then sometimes it's also through the shamanic journey work, through the very things that I teach. The reason why I teach it is because for years before I taught it and for years before I started doing healing sessions on others, I was doing this on myself. and so a lot, some of my courses, they're, you know, the difference, I think, between what I teach and what a lot of other people teach is a lot of other people, teach things that...

  This is, they come up with, I'm gonna teach this and this is a structure of what I'm gonna teach and this is how it is. For me, it all was channeled. It was all given to me in my journeys. Okay, I was just out of guidance of you need to start helping others with this work. And I was like, no. And I rejected it and it kept coming. And then finally all the signs were like, okay, I'll do it. I'll put up a website, right? I was doing other work and I was like, okay, I'll put up a website but I'm just gonna do that.

  MAGICommons Podcast (1:04:40)

  Yeah.

  Scott Silverston (1:04:51)

  for fun on the side. I'm not gonna, know, this isn't gonna be my job. Right? And then as soon as I did that within, I don't know, three or four weeks, I was seeing 10 clients a week for, which is a lot of, that's a lot of, you know, two hour sessions and resting in between, that's a lot of sessions. And then that was going on for months, years, and then out of the blue, my wife said, you know, you need to teach people. I'm like, no, no, no, no, no.

  And then of the blue, got an email from someone and she was like, I want to learn what you do. I'm going to be on Kauai for six weeks. Will you teach me? And I was like, okay, I guess you're right. I guess I'm supposed to teach. So I said, sure. And so she came and, and she was a kinesiologist working in a major urban area in Australia.

  one of their major cities. And so she came and she had a huge case. She was doing like 50 clients a week and she was taking on all the energy of all their clients and unable to let go of it. And so as she came, I was like, I have no idea what I'm going to teach this person until I get to know her. But every day, so I prepared my day one lecture and that's pretty much still my day one lecture that I give.

  in my fundamentals class. And then after she went home, what does she need to learn next? And I journey and I asked her, what does she need to learn next? And I was given what she needed to learn next. And that became day two and day three. And that's what we did for the whole six weeks. And that became the outline for my courses. And as soon as she left, it's actually a really funny story. I was looking at my phone and I saw this little dot on

  Messenger. I go, what's that? That's interesting. I've never seen a dot on that before. I never used Facebook Messenger before then. I hit it and it was another woman from England and she said, oh, you know, I really want to learn almost the exact same message. I really want to learn what you do. I want to come to Kauai for eight weeks and learn. Would you teach me? I was like, so I was like, oh my God, this is two weeks old. You know, something like

  MAGICommons Podcast (1:06:44)

  You

  You

  Scott Silverston (1:06:56)

  ever in internet time. And so I said to her, said, oh, I'm so sorry for the delayed reply. I actually never check messenger before my whole life. Do you want to talk? She goes, yeah, I was just about to book another course, but let's talk. And then she ended up coming. So I taught her and then more things came in because she's unique individual with her own things. And then as she was finishing up, this woman came for a session. And after the session, she goes,

  I really want to learn what you do. think I'm going to cancel my plane ticket home and stay for a month and study with you. So this repeated the exact story, similar story in different form for a full calendar year, a full calendar year. At which point my wife looked at me and said, you know, Scott, you really need to put this on your website that you teach. I go, yeah, I guess I do. And so I ended up doing that. And then that's how it, and that's how it developed.

  And so everything developed very organically for me through what people need. And it was all channeled in that way. And my courses evolved over time and continue to evolve. Right now they've been doing them for so long that there isn't much evolution. know, there isn't that much that gets added because we've covered most of the bases. But for a number of years, like four or five years, we were evolving every time I taught the course.

  was evolving it to someone's individual needs. Even when I've been teaching groups, I was like, that's missing. the questions, I always encourage all my students to ask questions because that makes the course even better. It helps with the explanations and stuff. So that's how it all, and that really is what makes me come alive. So as far as holding the space, I feel like, yeah, I just keep myself balanced. But naturally, this is the stuff that really

  gives me the creative inspiration is working with people and seeing people like how they're, you know, before this, I never had jobs where people were, you know, I got paid, but I never got paid and thank you'd. Not authentically thank you'd, right? Wow, thank you so much for what you do. I'm really grateful, you know, that people would pay and they'd be like, yeah, thanks a lot, right? Totally different thing. It's seeing people come alive, seeing those changes that happen in people.

  and how they really, you know, their whole lives open up. That's really where the creative inspiration comes from. And everything else flows from that. Then it's about me keeping myself balanced and making sure that I take care of myself so I have what there is to give.

  MAGICommons Podcast (1:09:18)

  That's beautiful. that can be regenerative, sustainable. So as we conclude this conversation for ordinary people, like for everyday people, what would be, what would you recommend them? Maybe a simple thing that they do daily that can

  Scott Silverston (1:09:22)

  It is.

  you

  MAGICommons Podcast (1:09:38)

  help them maybe to become more aware of the subconscious agreement that they hold or at least start to open space for the clarity to arrive.

  Yeah.

  Scott Silverston (1:09:53)

  That's a good question. So basically once you see it, can't unsee it. Once you become aware, can't become unaware. method that I teach is basically two things that are very simple to use and don't take a lot of time. So just in my introductory course, the shamanic journeying that I teach, it's a

  MAGICommons Podcast (1:09:59)

  Mm, true.

  Yeah.

  Scott Silverston (1:10:17)

  15 minute process. Okay, once you learn how to do it, which doesn't take that long, you know, it's a five day class, the 15 minute, it's 15 minutes due journey, sometimes less. I mean, I'll do five minute journeys. You don't have to do it for a full 15 minutes, but 15 minutes is about what's right. And then five to 10 minutes of journaling. That's it. That's really all you need to do. And the same thing with my energy body course.

  The routine that's learned is a 15 minute routine. So we want to have things that are practical. My whole idea is to have applied shamanism for daily life, okay? That we can use in the modern world. ⁓ Most people are not going to and shouldn't stop their jobs to become shaman. But that doesn't mean we should shut ourselves off completely to that world. It's traditionally been used by everybody.

  MAGICommons Podcast (1:10:51)

  Yes. Yes.

  Scott Silverston (1:11:07)

  in their society to a limited degree. And then there were some specialists who were the medicine people and the healers. But everybody used this shamanic state of consciousness. Everybody had understood how to access their spirit mind. And that's really what shamanic spirit medicine is, is bringing that back to the whole. So that it's something that you can apply in your day-to-day life. I have a lot of students who've gone through my whole program.

  and they come, know, they're therapists, they're healers, they're doctors, they're accountants, they're business people, they're trades people, they're young, they're old, they're educators, they're sports people, they're, you know, the whole swath of society. So each person applies it in their own unique way, right? I have someone who manages, you know, trust accounts for a state and estate planning.

  And I have someone else who manages, who's a doctor and someone else who runs a shop and someone else who's a massage therapist and someone else who's a therapist and someone else who's a personal growth and development course and someone else who's an educator and someone else who is a retired school board director and on and on and on. Tenured professors and ⁓ people who worked in EMT.

  You know, it's the whole gamut and they all find ways to apply it to their day to day life. Not necessarily in their professional life, but sometimes within the context of the dynamics in their profession. Right? So no matter what your job is, you're going to be interfacing with other people. How do you deal with your boss? That's maybe giving you problems. And then you find a way to work collaboratively with your boss and you know, they have

  certain tendencies and then you go, okay, actually, no, I'm gonna, how do I move that around so I can work with their tendencies without asking them to change? Because you can't really ask people to change. They have to want to do it themselves. Yeah.

  MAGICommons Podcast (1:13:01)

  So from the courses, is there like one practice that you can share specifically for everyday people to start integrate some sort of like shamanistic practice in their daily basis that helps them to see or develop clarity that

  Scott Silverston (1:13:21)

  Yeah.

  MAGICommons Podcast (1:13:23)

  to develop clarity into their subconscious agreement, whether in themselves or in others, it's easier to see, but like in ourselves.

  Scott Silverston (1:13:30)

  Well, yeah, the first step is learning how to do a shamanic journey. That's the only way to really see it. And so I have some free resources on my website, a video of how to journey and then a longer video called Navigating the Spirit World that's on my YouTube channel. Anybody who wants that, you can just contact me and I'll send you the link or I can send you the link and you can post it along with this.

  if you'd like, and that's the intro, because you have to be able to access your spirit mind in order to see it. So the first step is always to access your spirit mind. And then once you've accessed your spirit mind, then you can ask whatever questions you want, right? can, generally in the beginning, just ask, tell people to ask to receive a healing. That's the simplest thing to do, ask to receive healing. Because then you're getting the healing that you need.

  You may not get to the level of becoming consciously aware of the agreements that you have yet, but you still might receive a healing that changes those agreements. Just like that youth that I mentioned who found that his hands were the perfect length and width for seeing the sunset. He changed his agreement without knowing what he was doing. Right? In that moment, he goes, I'm good at something. That's a new agreement for him. He didn't know that until that moment. Right?

  MAGICommons Podcast (1:14:43)

  Yeah.

  Scott Silverston (1:14:48)

  So it's the same thing, you can receive a healing and not know that you've changed an agreement within that healing. Maybe just receiving a healing, someone does a journey and learns how to journey through the ⁓ free tape and through the free video and they receive it, wow, I can heal. I can heal, I can heal myself. That's huge. That's a huge agreement. Feeling empowered to heal yourself? That's huge. A lot of people don't feel that.

  MAGICommons Podcast (1:15:05)

  Yeah.

  Yeah.

  Scott Silverston (1:15:13)

  A lot of people feel like completely helpless and at the mercy of others to fix them. I can heal myself. I can heal my emotions. I can heal my spirit. I can heal my physical body. I can heal my mental body. can heal my energy. Wow. Amazing, right?

  MAGICommons Podcast (1:15:26)

  That's beautiful.

  Amazing.

  Scott Silverston (1:15:28)

  .

  MAGICommons Podcast (1:15:31)

  I feel like just talking about it and open space for this conversation to happen it feels so joyful it feels very fulfilled ⁓

  Scott Silverston (1:15:42)

  Thank you.

  MAGICommons Podcast (1:15:46)

  I have more questions to ask but I think it's pretty good I need to conclude it. Maybe I can just ask one more question. It's more of like a question about the visual cues. A lot of times I see in your logo there is this eagle.

  Scott Silverston (1:15:56)

  Yeah, go for it. What's the last question?

  MAGICommons Podcast (1:16:13)

  And I do have a lot of associations of feathers or birds receiving feathers, pick up feathers. And now in your logo, I see this eagle, you're coming from behind of the eagle and the eagle is flying. And a lot of spiritual practice, they also have this image of a bird or an eagle.

  Scott Silverston (1:16:13)

  So.

  MAGICommons Podcast (1:16:34)

  Why? What does that mean? Like why a bird, not a rabbit, not a turtle, not a squirrel, not a blue jay, but an eagle?

  Scott Silverston (1:16:42)

  It could be.

  Well, Eagle is usually big picture of you.

  seeing the big picture. But what I teach is that we learn from all of the web of life. which is called shamanic self mastery, where we get into the agreements, we actually work with 10 different animal spirits. We work with eagle, we work with snake, we work with bear, we work with beaver, we work with owl, we work with deer, we work with turtle, we work with dolphin, we work with bison, and we work with butterfly. So we get

  We learn how to receive from many different aspects of the web of life. And many people work with other animals as well, with the wolf or with the hawk or with crow or, you know, with rabbit or squirrel or right. I actually had a woman who took my courses a number of years ago and she's in Europe and she's a children's book author in addition to being a mom. And she asked for my permission and wrote a book.

  of Dreamtime stories for children based on my work, imagining them to work with each of the animal medicines in my Level 2 training, and just giving a teach, and it's called Journey Along with the Eagles, name of the book, and she reads to the children about this, and then they're not journeying, but they're using their dreaming imagination, and then she added in Squirrel, because she mentioned Squirrel, was one of the, she added in some of her own animals that she works with.

  And so, yeah, we want to work with everything, but eagle in general, there's a lot of symbolism from different cultures, on different cultures, but in general, it's seeing the big picture and getting close to creator because eagle flies high and has excellent vision. So that would be the symbolic meaning. Yeah.

  MAGICommons Podcast (1:18:23)

  Yeah, that's beautiful. It's kind of like the spiritual work that we do, um, that you help people do is to see the world through a lens that is a big picture view, that is a web of life view, that is a lens that goes beyond our human body.

  into this vastness, this macro level of viewing and seeing and being. And I would share that a lot of times when we get stuck, that's because we get stuck inside of a lens that is not big picture that

  that does not open space, rather they just restrict us into corners, into darkness and into stuckiness that is in deep desire to be released back in this big picture view, such like an eco.

  Scott Silverston (1:19:21)

  Thank you. ⁓ It is Big Picture View and it's also the micro view. What is my agreements? What is my relationship with myself as well as the world around me? And then there's the big picture view. And is my micro view actually in alignment? Is it helping the world around me? Is it helping me in the world around me? Is it aligned with that? So it's both. It's always the macro and the micro and how does...

  How do the two align? As above, so below, as within, so without, right? So we look at both and we can access both through either portal, right? I can look at the reflections in the world around me, how is society and see how that reflects in my life. And I can also look inside and see about what is my behavior and then I can see that reflected in the world around me as well. So either point.

  it gives us an access point. It's just a matter of, you know, what's more alive in that moment for that individual.

  MAGICommons Podcast (1:20:18)

  beautiful and that was a chance our ability to hold two perspective at the same time if needed because right now it's so easy to focus on one and ignore the other while holding both lenses at the same time really help us to open space and help us to be this this observer in our own realities and and and being able to see

  the realities from both perspectives. That's beautiful.

  Scott Silverston (1:20:44)

  Thank you. Yeah, that's

  we started, About everything being relational with the alien, right? We started with the alien and the alien comes down and what would you do? I'd observe. I'd watch because, you know, hey, how's it going? I'd just watch because I want to see, I want to observe what's happening. So I have both perspectives, mine and try to observe the other perspective as well.

  MAGICommons Podcast (1:20:48)

  Micro.

  Yeah.

  That's Scott is such a beautiful conversation that we have and learned so much. And for our audience who would like to connect with Scott, we encourage you to check out the info in the show notes or in the article below.

  It's all about relation. if you, if as you ask to receive healing and this is what you're hearing, receive it. This is an open invitation to everyone who is seeking inner clarity alignment between this micro existence and this micro existence.

  and who would like to restore the sacred boundaries of our beingness to embody this radical agency, this radical sovereignty within in a world that is becoming more more unpredictable and live and embody a peaceful fulfilled life.

  regardless of where you are, what skin color you wear, what language you speak, what food you eat, where you're located, what time zone you're in, being able to restore your own inner magic, this would be beautiful.

  Scott Silverston (1:22:28)

  Thank you so much. Thanks for giving me the opportunity to be here and to share with you. I really enjoyed it. I really enjoyed our conversation. Thanks so much.

Shamanism as a Technology of the Mind

Shamanism is often misunderstood as a historical relic, but in a modern context, it functions as a profound, practical technology of the mind. It provides a reliable framework for accessing the "Spirit Mind"—the Theta brainwave state where our deepest subconscious programming actually lives.

Rather than relying on psychotropic substances, which can be unpredictable and hard to integrate into a busy life, modern applied shamanism uses rhythmic entrainment. A steady drumbeat allows the brain to safely and effectively drop into this "Dream Time" at will. In this state, a practitioner can track a physical tension or a recurring emotional trigger back to its origin point.

By pulling on that energetic thread, we bypass the rationalizing, logical brain and uncover the exact moment an invisible agreement was formed. Once the old code is identified, the emotional charge holding it in place is dissolved. We then perform what is traditionally called "Soul Retrieval"—calling back the vital life force and light that we surrendered at the point of our original trauma, making space for a new, healthier agreement.

Redefining "Right Relationship"

Healing this internal code naturally transforms how we interact with the external world, bringing us into what is called the right relationship.

Many people unconsciously operate on a zero-sum energy model: the belief that to be safe or powerful, we must overpower others, or we must allow others to overpower us. True energetic autonomy flips this dynamic entirely. It relies on a vertical connection to infinite energy—drawing from the earth below and the space above—rather than siphoning energy horizontally from the people around us.

When we rewrite our internal agreements, we establish an inviolable sacred space. A perfect example is learning to set a boundary without aggression. If someone violates your space, an old invisible agreement might trigger a shouting match or cause you to submissively retreat. An updated agreement allows you to stand your ground, peacefully and neutrally observing the conflict. You do not force your will onto the other person; you simply hold your space, grounded in the knowledge that your energetic container belongs to you alone.

The Daily Practice of Dreaming

This shift from surviving to thriving requires practical, daily application. Consciously or unconsciously, we "dream ourselves into being" every single day. To command that dreaming, we must establish a routine that bridges the spirit mind and the logic mind.

A simple 15-minute shamanic journey driven by a drum track, followed by five to ten minutes of journaling, is often enough to maintain clarity and surface new insights. Grounding this mental and spiritual work in physical reality—through movement, breathwork, or time spent completely unplugged in nature—ensures that the breakthroughs gained in the Theta state are actively embodied in your waking life, rather than just intellectualized.

The Shift to Radical Agency

Ultimately, rewriting our invisible agreements bridges the gap between our probable future and our possible future. If we leave our childhood programming untouched, our probable future is simply a repetition of our past.

But when we actively retrieve our lost energy and overwrite those outdated survival codes, a completely new realm of possibility opens up. We stop waiting for the world to change so that we can feel safe. Instead, we change the energetic lens through which we interact with the world.

This is the essence of radical agency. It is the ultimate realization that you are not a passive receiver of your circumstances, but the active architect of your destiny. By clearing your own hidden codes and standing firmly in your own space, you anchor true harmony in your life—and, by extension, in the web of life around you.

How does this relate to Regenerative Vitality?

We are exploring the possibility for shamanism to be a more accessible practical, modern technology for identifying and rewriting "invisible agreements," such as subconscious childhood survival codes that limit developmental potentials. This process shifts us from a zero-sum, survival-based existence to a state of "radical agency," where one is no longer a passive victim of circumstances but the active architect of their destiny. Ultimately, by mastering this internal "right relationship," individuals stop looking for external salvation and instead cultivate grounded harmony, enabling them to heal themselves and contribute to a healthier web of life.

⭐ Scott & MAGIC

Scott Silverston’s magic lies in his ability to demystify the ancient and make it fiercely practical for the modern world. A Duke University graduate who walked away from a career as a director of an international trade-finance company. Scott founded Shamanic Spirit Medicine to normalize shamanic consciousness as an accessible tool for everyday empowerment. From his home base in Kauai—where he also practices and teaches Tai Chi, Qigong, and Wuji Meditation to keep the energy body deeply grounded—he guides students away from the reliance on external gatekeepers, like psychotropic substances or gurus, and back to their own innate power. His ultimate magic is reminding us that we don't need to look outside ourselves for salvation; by doing the quiet, rhythmic work of rewriting our internal agreements and claiming our inviolable sacred space, we can proudly declare, "I can heal myself," and, in doing so, bring a profound, grounded harmony back to the wider Web of Life.

• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/scott-silverston-shamanic-spirit-medicine/ 

• Find Inner Power Animal: https://shamanicspiritmedicine.com/shamanic-journey-how-to

• Website: https://www.ShamanicSpiritMedicine.com

Creative Process (non-linear): Develop + Iterate Outlines & Drafts (Human + ai) ~Guest Alignment Feedback~Final Alignment by MAGICommons, Initial Publication: June 5 2026