S2 E33 - It's an Inside Job: How Our Beliefs Shape the World We Experience

 LightSong School of 21st-Century Shamanism and Energy Medicine Talking Stick Podcast - Manifesting Miracles It's an Inside Job: How Our Beliefs Shape the World We Experience What if the thing you most want to change isn't actually outside of you? In this episode of LightSong Talking Stick - Manifesting Miracles, Jan Engels-Smith explores a foundational principle of shamanic practice and manifestation: lasting change begins within. Through questions and deeply personal stories from members of the LightSong community, Jan examines what happens when we stop trying to fix other people and begin paying attention to our own beliefs, expectations, judgments, and perceptions. The conversation begins with a difficult question about loving someone whose behavior has caused pain. How do we remain loving without expecting another person to change? Is it possible to accept someone exactly as they are while still honoring ourselves? And what role might challenging relationships play in our own spiritual evolution? Jan offers a deceptively simple answer: You don't have to change them. You change yourself. From there, the conversation opens into unconditional love, soul contracts, acceptance, and the ways our judgments can lock both ourselves and others into roles we've unconsciously assigned them. One participant shares a remarkable example from her own life. For years, she carried the painful belief that she was excluded by her family and that her father would never reach out to her. Rather than attempting to change him, she began examining the belief itself. She deliberately looked for evidence of inclusion, noticed the ways her father did express love, and interrupted the familiar thoughts that reinforced her old story. Then something unexpected happened. Her father called her. It was something he had never done throughout her adult life. For Jan, the story illustrates one of the central teachings of this conversation: change inside, and the world outside can begin to look very different. The discussion goes deeper into the nature of unconditional love. Is unconditional love truly possible while we're living a human life filled with opinions, reactions, and judgments? Jan suggests that learning about love is one of the purposes of being here—and that the difficult people and circumstances in our lives can become catalysts for that learning. Another participant shares an extraordinary experience after a severe injury in which her ordinary sense of identity disappeared. In its place was an overwhelming experience of oneness—a vast field in which there was no separation, conflict, personality, or judgment. There was simply love. She returned from the experience with one clear message: We are here to help each other. The group also explores the relationship between observation and reality, the energetic power of our opinions, shamanic journeying into possible futures, and what happens when we begin questioning beliefs we've previously treated as facts. Who have you placed into a category because of something they did years ago? What expectations are you carrying into your relationships? What belief about yourself or someone else have you repeated so often that it now feels like truth? And what might happen if you allowed something—or someone—to simply be? The episode closes with a word that captures much of the conversation: Allowing. Allowing doesn't mean approving of everything that happens. It means releasing the constant need to judge, label, control, or force an outcome. It creates the neutrality from which something new can emerge. Because ultimately, as one participant beautifully summarizes: "It's an inside job. All of the answers are within me." About Jan Engels-Smith Jan Engels-Smith is a shamanic practitioner, teacher, author, and founder of LightSong School of 21st Century Shamanism and Energy Medicine. For more than four decades, Jan has explored consciousness, healing, personal transformation, and humanity's relationship with the unseen realms. She has performed thousands of soul retrievals and trained students around the world in shamanic practices designed to help people reconnect with their innate wisdom and spiritual nature. Jan is the author of Becoming Yourself: The Journey from Head to Heart and Through the Rabbit Hole: Explore and Experience the Shamanic Journey and Energy Medicine. Learn more about Jan, LightSong, classes, and shamanic training at LightSong.net.