Gossip is the silent killer.
 
In smear campaigns and monkey business, gossip, spreading rumours and lies behind the back of others, are part of the weapons of choice of toxic congregations and the jealous playing their games. 

They will always have someone who will – their reasons and agenda being solely their own – state, that they have “heard” the same or are “in the know” pretending that you have been friends or close associates by using your nickname or private information. 
 
Gossip plants a seed of doubt in the minds of others and if they did not like you from the start or they are working on past wounding, that seed will sprout eventually. 
 
It is part of the psychological, mental and emotional warfare abusers wage. It happens behind your back, unbeknownst to you.
 
Your joy and self-confidence in doing things will suddenly be called arrogance and superiority.
 
You being open and helping others will be painted as you scheming and being calculating. 
 ​
​You shining your light and showing your talents openly, because you love what you are doing? If they no longer profit from you or want to harm you, they will paint you as arrogant and prideful. 
 

​The reason why I love them so much is, that they are hard as hell in the beginning. “Bloodborne” for example was deemed so difficult, that Sony sent an electronic gift to everyone who succeeded in platting it. ​

​The games also have a lot of humor, dark one that is. In “Dark Souls II”, one of the very first trophies you are going to unlock on your way to the Platinum trophy is “This is Dark Souls”. All that is required to achieve it, is to die for the first time. 

Yes, for the first time. 

The challenge to me was, not to get it as the first trophy. I succeeded. Naturally, I had to fail better that time around, too, eventually.

Soulsborne games do not take you by the hand and if you want to find out more about the lore, you have to take a closer look at the items you are collecting and the NPC’s you will meet on the way while playing. ​

Swans are the Guardians of the Gates and teach us about our roles as guardians in our lives, as custodians on Mother Earth and the Sea of Stars. They tell the stories of their own metamorphosis and transformation, like Hans Christian Andersen did in his fairy tale “The Ugly Duckling”. Swans do not know their own beauty, they shine unbeknownst to them.
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​As cygnets they are unassuming, brown and black. They radiate their beauty from within, but their surroundings are blind to it. In the fairy tale, a cygnet was adopted by a family of ducks. It was ridiculed and made fun of, because it did not look like they did. The cygnet albeit stayed true to its heart and transformed into its beautiful adult swan self, never belittling those that had belittled it, but becoming a beacon of hope and resilience embracing others with love unconditional.  

Gliding gently across the Sea of Emotions, Swan says, “Be gentle and compassionate, when going deep within and when touching the souls of other beings. Breathe calmness into your heart. Calm waters reflect your beauty, the light within your heart, a raging sea casts shadows and tears your world apart.”

​The Swan listens to all stories alike, for there is none that cannot be told. Our shadows are nothing to be afraid of, but they are to be seen, acknowledged, honored and loved. 

They have formed out of remnants of our wounds, protecting us and defending us their way. The moment we look at them, befriend them, ask them, what their needs are, they turn into gifts and aspects of ours we thought we did not possess or talents we only saw in others. 

Shadows don’t destroy or devour us, they lead us deep into ourselves, where the seeds of light are hidden. When we embrace both our shadows and our light, we come into balance.

​We open our hearts unconditionally to those who answer our soul’s call with an equally open heart or set a firm boundary, become the guardian and the gate of our world and keep those that try to either come in telling lies, making compliments devoid of honesty or invade using violence out of our sanctuaries, our hearts. 

​We are both shadow and light, we are the in-between, the side of us that simply is, non-reactive, non-responsive, calm and filled with serene peace.

​Never however, threaten a swan or try to force your way into their heart: They will protect the gate that leads into their heart and those living within without mercy.

​„No.” is a full sentence.
 
“Enough.” is a sufficient reply. 
 
A dialog is not led by one.
 
A conversation is neither a battlefield nor a war to be won. 
 

​The polar opposite of a shaman who had consciously re-opened a wound and then watched over me, was another shaman who I walked with for quite a while. It was at a time, where I had just begun to go deep. He saw my wounding as well and he recognized my gifts and abilities during a time, in which I was blind to them as a result of my own mirror having been shattered. 
​

​He started to erode my self-confidence little by little by belittling me, making fun of me and my tools, and laughing at me, when I asked for advice and help, getting angry, confusing me by saying one thing one moment and the opposite only a while later.  

There were good days as well, which made it so confusing. He told me stories, he cracked jokes and when he was talking about his nephews and nieces his whole being lit up. His wounding was a mirror of mine. I had started to trust him, because I had felt seen and understood, so I was open to him. 

One day I called him and told him that I had cleansed and healed a stone. He laughed at me and told me that that was impossible. A few months later he showed me two crystals he had cleared and thus healed.

Another time he told me that he did not like metals and did not work with them, only to tell me to step onto a metal plate during a healing ceremony a while later.

Another day, he made fun of my drum bag, calling it too big for my drum, which is a smaller one. He then grabbed my drum and wanted to go on with his rant, but he froze for some reason, my drum in his hands staring at her with wide yes. He was standing there like that for more than a minute, until he exclaimed, “It is not cleansed.”, still wide-eyed.

When I was about to leave that same day and putting on my jacket, a thought hit me and I started to smile. He exploded and said, “Don’t pat yourself on your shoulder and smile. I tell you when you have done something well and when to smile.”

This happened long before, I met the other shaman who had told me to say "Thank you." whenever I was being put down or belittled, but what I replied to him, was “Thank you.”

​It made him stare at me in confusion and he said “Thank you.” in return.

​I never visited his house again after that. I talked to him one more time, when I was about to attend a weekend ceremony in Salzburg. He tried to talk me out of it, belittling me and telling me that the shaman who would be conducting the ceremony was darkness and evil. I told him that I would listen and trust, what my heart was telling me about that shaman, and not his voice.
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His making fun of me was not medicine. He went over the line again and again, when his own wounding flared up. One day, when he was angry, his masked slipped. He told me, that if someone hurt him, he played with them. That time he was talking about a former girlfriend of his. Another time he told me that he had been working on me energetically without permission, mocking me again. 

One day, when he had put me down again, called me a coward not willing to go deep and with whom he did not want to work, he knew that he had overdone it. He followed me, when I left his premises, talking about squirrels. His energy had changed completely. 

I made the conscious choice not to call or visit him again, after he had tried to talk me out of going to Salzburg, calling the shaman I would meet darkness.

It was not easy, because I loved him. Yes. Nothing ever happened, but he knew. He once tried to make me jealous by telling me on the phone that he had a new girlfriend. I told him that I was happy for him. He fell silent, told me that he had to go and hung up.

Loving someone means to be happy, if they become in love with someone else. It is not about possession. How could I not have been happy for a friend who had found a partner who made his heart beat faster?

I met him again by chance more than a year later. We had a conversation and I showed him one of my drawings. He made a remark about details not being right. I said, “Yes, I know. It is not about that.” He started laughing, but in a good way. 

Again, we spoke about the shaman I had met in Salzburg, again he called him dark and evil and again, I told him that I would follow my own heart in this and not his voice. There was learning to be done. We agreed to disagree.

Then someone else started to twist something I had said and to my surprise, the shaman came to my defense and told the young man in no uncertain terms about the power of words and the energy he had just called in on himself.

​When it was time to part ways, we looked at each other and I told him, that I trust my heart and follow my own path, doing things my way. He started to smile and said, “I know.”

I once was given the honor of walking with a shaman who had told me to say “Thank you.”, whenever I was hurt, someone had harmed or insulted me or had intentionally done something to cause me harm behind my back, for a short period of time.  
 
He knew I was hurting, as he had known about the experiences I had made in the past and how they had formed my perception of the world. He did not offer any help and he did not acknowledge my pain making me feel completely unseen.
​

​To say that it was irritating, would be an understatement. It hurt. Months went by until I realized that he had helped me understand my own medicine and deep wounding and my way of healing. He had seen me and allowed me to dive deeper into myself. You develop coping mechanisms, when you are getting traumatized and if you dive deep enough, alchemize and transmute, they become your medicine. 
 
If you are part of a family, workplace, friend group or circle in which toxicity and flipping the script by painting the victim as the abuser, are part of the culture developed, implemented and accepted, change your perspective. The wound is the healing. If you can see it for what it is, recognize and acknowledge that it is there, you will be able to heal in time. It takes strength, willpower and determination to take a seat in the eye of the storm and remain calm amidst the ongoing chaos.

In my perception, what he did was using his medicine, re-opening a wound that was festering on the inside and thus allowing me to dive deeper. ​ 

I was given the choice of either going deeper within myself or lose myself in the pain and retaliate. What he did to me, looks like emotional and psychological abuse to others. I do not see it that way and if you know, how shamans are trained, you will understand my perspective.
 
He had told me stories of his past, his mentors and their teachings and traditions and how he had been taught and brought up. There were parallels and patterns, I recognized. What he had been taught and experienced, had turned into the medicine, he was bestowing onto me. He treated everyone the way that would help and further their own way of healing best, never intending harm or carrying hate and jealousy in his heart.
 
His intention was to heal and not to destroy.
 
It is important to know, that the shaman had on one occasion tried to touch me, when I was in distress and had gone within to protect myself, as a result of not being given the time and space to decompress and sort through everything I was experiencing.

​I said “No.”.  

He respected that.
 
He never went over the line.

​If you want to journey into the mind of a sacred clown, then up is down, left is right, an ending is a beginning, the wound is the healing, opposites are two sides of the same coin and balance is walking the edge. Walking your abyss takes courage, facing your ego means facing fear. Courage and fear are the same, just different markings on a scale.
​

​Humor and laughter are among the strongest medicines there are. Being able to laugh with yourself and letting go of laughing at yourself is a healing experience. When meeting a sacred clown, a trickster, an agent of change, expect the unexpected.
 
A sacred clown turns the world upside down, challenging norms and perspectives. The wound inflicted onto them becomes the healing, an ending threatened a pathway to a new horizon, belittling them is showing them their potential and the one who laughs best is not the one who laughs last. It is the one who has the strength and courage to laugh with themselves and let yesterday's ego go with a gentle smile.

Never albeit play with a soul.
 
In its malevolent archetype the trickster turns into the soulthief, the narcissist, whose aim is not to help you heal and break the cycle but to bind you to them and prolong the exchange of abuse and reactive abuse. Narcissists inflict wounds to trigger you into a positive or negative emotional reaction that aims solely on feeding the void in themselves. ​

 
Do not mistake a soul tief, malevolent trickster or narcissist for a sacred clown or a shaman.

A shaman and sacred clown know that with the path they have agreed on walking comes responsibility. A narcissist is a malevolent trickster and bully, not a healer. 

A malevolent trickster is a thief, only catering to their own needs. It is a me me me that only takes the needs of others in account, if it serves a purpose, polishes and shines the mask they are wearing or their meticulously crafted image, brings in fame, fortune or riches.

The trickster in question attempts to wear the accomplishments and merits of others as their own, benefiting from being associated with them. Soulthieves are masters of facade management, abusing spirituality and religion.

They appear incredibly charming, but are hunters on the prowl for new prey, categorising people. If you bear no name or they do not recognise your worth, they will discard you after having used and drained you. If being associated with you makes them shine as well however, they will brownnose, kiss your ass, play the victim or rescuer and massage your ego. 
 
Bullying someone else, putting them down behind their back, causing them physical or emotional pain, abusing spirituality, religion or the illusion of being anonymous on social media, dismantling the self-confidence of someone walking with you to steal their light and extinguish their flame, mocking their struggles, consciously re-traumatizing and abandoning them, when they cannot bear it anymore and ask for help and then smearing and isolating them, is neither “just a joke”, “just a mistake” or “a prank”. It is consciously playing with the soul of another being.

The worst nightmare of a bully is a person who embraces themselves, has realized that an ending and a beginning are the same and starts laughing with themselves instead of at themselves embracing who they are to the fullest.
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I am a floorball goaltender. The first thing, I tell young goalies I mentor is, that no matter how good you are, the opposing team will score on you. You can do everything right and still, the ball will find its way into the net on occasion. It is not about you being perfect, it is about you embracing the game in all of its aspects and becoming in love with it.  
 

 
About twenty years ago, our team did interviews with “25 – Das Magazin”. The camera man made fun of us goalies telling us that the shots we were facing were nothing. He got the ingenious idea to shoot a scene while lying in goal having the players shoot at him, no protective gear necessary. Us goalies said nothing.
 
One of our players back then was a former NHL prospect. He let go of a slapshot and hit the camera man directly in the balls. The camera man sang a different tune after that, likening being hit by a floorball to being hit by a machine gun which is an exaggeration. He and his colleagues showed their sense of humor, too. That scene is in the final cut they aired, original sound and all. I still have it. 
 
Embrace imperfection.

​In doing so lies the ultimate victory. Rise and grow. In your own time. On your path. Laughing with yourself, embracing life and its cycles. 

Last September, Animal Wisdom Speaks, one of the circles I am building, was invited to be part of the United Nations Summit of the Future Action Days.

​During the event, I spoke about the power of storytelling, of making a choice between inducing and introjecting fear or becoming the hope and thus breaking the cycle of attack and provocation, retaliation, reactive abuse and blame shifting step by step and turning pain and old wounding into healing and wisdom, so our world becomes the garden in which the dreamers of tomorrow can set root, blossom and bloom.
 
The title was “Voices of Change – Empowering Communities through Inclusive Dialogue and Storytelling”. Here is my speech:
 
“My name is Kristin Raphaela Otti. I was born and raised in the Lavant Valley in Southern Austria, a province called Carinthia. I am shaman, storyteller and artist. Above all, I love learning and listening to stories. I remember the time, when I was allowed to play cards with my grandma and listen to her stories very fondly. She was a businesswoman and in politics, so our conversations were a never-ending stream of new information, adventures and learning. I am also a change manager, organizational designer and teacher by trade.
​

​One might think that there is a contradiction in being a shaman and being in business, but a shaman empowers people by listening and by telling stories and a change manager does the same. We go into organizations and businesses, listen to the stories told and then by telling new stories, we help shape the future of the organizations and businesses. 
 
As in everything, the stories told by the people, the individuals coming to us or by the businesses and organizations vary. There are stories of hope that are beautiful. There are stories of despair, demise and fear. There are stories filled with fear of the past and the hurt that was being done and inflicted upon us. 
 
In the end, there is no story that cannot be told. There is no story that is not worth being listened to. There is no story that is better or worse, none is bigger or smaller than anybody else’s. 

Stories and storytelling are the fabric of our world. They have always been used to create either division or unity. Every word spoken bears power. 
 
A single word can grow into a sentence, a sentence can grow into judgment and thus become a sword dividing. And yet, a single word can grow into a seed of change, blossoming and blooming, and become an open hand and a guide into a new tomorrow. 
 
In working together, in telling our stories in conversation, on social media, in daily life, in business, there is always a choice: We can be the fear that brings division and despair or we can be the hope of a new dawn, a new day, a new tomorrow.
 
Let us choose to be the hope. 
 
Let us come together in a circle, listen to each other with open hearts, as equals, standing side by side. 
 
Through listening to one another with open hearts instead of trying to seem bigger or better, let us welcome different points of view and diversity in approaching matters and life.
 
Let us turn our stories into hope and whatever we have experienced as individuals, as the children we are, as communities, as people - Let those stories grow into seeds of hope! 
 
I have done so in my life and at the moment, I am building and creating three organizations that aim to helping people become healers instead of being victims and to bring change. Animal Wisdom Speaks helps through storytelling to make aware of environmental issues and by having storytelling events at schools aims to empower children and teenagers to stand tall and powerful.
 
The past is a teacher not a place to live in or dwell on, the present is the moment, we can shape with our stories. The future is the playground we create for the dreamers of tomorrow, for our children. 
 
Let go of the past, let go of fear.
 
Dare to dream. 
 
Dare to be the hope of a new tomorrow.
 
Dare to tell your story."

There comes a point at which you learn to detach and observe your surroundings in a different way. You will slowly start to laugh with yourself instead of at yourself.
 
Your inner critic turns into a clown and life becomes colorful again. 
 

​Picture it, your inner critic marching up to you, wearing a clown’s costume while being accompanied by a mariachi band celebrating you, while you are trying, learning, failing, getting up, growing, making the same mistake again for the last time, making that very mistake one more time for the gusto and succeeding in the end.
 
Your mindset changes and it will slowly change your reactions and responses to others. ​

​Embrace the part of you that is self-sabotaging and critical and befriend it. Your inner critic, the introjects, shame and beliefs others have placed within you, can show you, where your wounding is and if you change your approach and how you look at them, guide you on your path to healing.
 
There is no shame in failing, making a mistake, being imperfect and growing. Growth does not stem from perfection, growth is constant change, going through cycles, night and day.
 
Laugh with the you, you were yesterday. Embrace it, do not chastise it and let it go, like a tree lets go of its leaves in autumn. 
 
Say thank you and embrace life with a smile.