He was watching a conch shell sitting on the deck behind my lounge chair. My parents visited the Caribbean many decades before, and had brought me the shell as a present. The pink had long since faded, and the outside of shell was polished by weather.The conch shell was moving. Not fast, but it was coming toward us. I immediately thought a mouse or something had climbed in and couldn't get out. I got up, watched for a moment, and then I lifted the shell. I was cautious. I couldn't imagine what might be trapped in there.

I got a stick from the yard and probed the curved interior as best I could. There was nothing trapped in there. It was empty. I put the shell down and it started to move again. Gazer was now sitting, watching with his head cocked, and then looked at me as if to say, "Well, what are you going to do about this?"

It had been a long day. I had seen two clients, and had done a lot of intense work. I had already been outside of my body for more than three hours that day, and was tired. So as I watched the moving shell, I thought, "OK, I'll journey if I must, but maybe whatever is there can wait for a night."

I said aloud, "I understand you need something from me, and I will serve you, but I will come to you tomorrow. Please stop moving if you understand me."

The shell stopped moving. I went to bed and woke up fresh the next morning. I immediately journeyed to the helping spirits, and asked them what the spirit in the shell wanted from me.

It was the spirit of a small child who had drowned in the ocean. She was wandering looking for her mother, and was, of course, suffering. She did not know she was dead. So in the journey, the helping spirits and I performed a psychopomp. I had learned about this work from the spirits themselves and the FSS Shamanism, Dying, and Beyond workshop, as well as in the FSS Three Year program.

"Psychopomp" is a Greek word, which means "conductor of souls." Shamans have been serving the dead as well as the living through time immemorial. I dearly love this work--the spirits taught me how to do it very early on in my shamanic training. I never had a name for it until I took the FSS training, and was amazed to discover it was an ancient practice with a distinguished lineage.

When you have worked with many, many clients, you begin to get accustomed to phenomena. I wasn't, and am still not, especially fond of the drama inherent in phenomenological events, but have lost any fear of them. I see them as a red flag, an urgent communication that something needs to be done.

Over the years, I have learned a lot about shamanic work, but, as I tell clients and students when they ask about phenomena, all shamanic work happens in the heart of mystery.

I have long since proven to myself, through empirical evidence, that the helping spirits I work with are omniscient. Sometimes I think I am a slow shamanic study; I err on needing a lot of proof before I will accept an event as being a spiritual entanglement or message. Through the helping spirits tutelage and my FSS training, I have learned to completely trust the helping spirits to tell me if they know that shamanic work is necessary.

Which brings us to back to mystery. I work in mystery always. My shamanic helping spirits always know what to do and when. All of this has taught me something fundamental about our spirits and our souls, as well as the spirits and soul of all the animate and inanimate beings in the world. And that is this: Mystery is safe.

This must be one of the most seminal lessons in shamanism. And in a world of uncertainty, in a world where so many are suffering, it is a corridor to a kind of safety, a kind of fairness. A sense of rightness even when the imbalance of events make you feel like you are falling down.

I believe it is a core tenet, and from it springs many remarkable gifts in part because it isn't simplistic. Mystery is safe, but it is not necessarily easy. Many complex lessons, too many to share here, grow from this knowledge. But one is especially important. In so many of my client sessions - in fact, the vast majority - my helping spirits tell me to repeat this to clients: You are always being held and cherished.