I just wanted to share something with you that I read this morning – about the Camino and its symbol – the scallop shell.

Caroline Myss is perhaps the world’s greatest living medicinal intuitive. She is also an extraordinary spiritual teacher and renowned speaker, as well as being a five times New York Times best selling author.

She is also a true mystic.

Caroline Myss features prominently in my film, PGS – Intuition is your Personal Guidance System. 

Aside from teaching and holding seminars and workshops, she also regularly conducts spiritual tours. I’m on her newsletter feed, and this morning I got an update on a tour she’s leading in April next year, to amongst other places, Pamplona.

As most of you reading this blog will know, Pamplona is a city on the Camino, and for many it’s their start to the pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela.

Well, Caroline is starting her spiritual tour there next year. Here is what she wrote in her newsletter. It resonated with me because it’s about the two things I’m most interested in – the journey of the soul, and the Camino…

CAROLINE MYSS:

In recent years, I have become devoted to teaching spiritual direction and contemporary mystical spirituality.  It is my deep belief as a teacher, a medical intuitive, and a mystic that most people have been searching for a way to embrace the power of their soul for most of their life. 

Perhaps you have not been conscious of that search, but that is because you are not familiar with the subtle tactics of the way the soul maneuvers in your psyche, your heart and even in your physical biology. 

For all the many ways we can describe this rapidly changing time in which we are living, I see this time as the era in which the consciousness of the soul is emerging as the core power of the human being.  A new understanding of the soul is essential, one that is based upon the truth that the soul is our mystical consciousness, not an object of religion.

I am passionate about teaching mystical consciousness and introducing people to the power of their soul.  To accommodate this workshop theme, CMED and Alternatives UK. have created a workshop experience in Spain that begins in Pamplona, a town on the famous Camino de Santiago, the long walk across Spain (or France or Portugal) to the Church of Saint James the Apostle in Santiago de Compostela. 

We chose that town as the start of our workshop because of a legend associated with a Pilgrim. According to the legend, a Pilgrim, exhausted and thirsty from traveling the Camino, met a stranger, also traveling on the road. This stranger happened to be the Devil in disguise. The Devil offered to show the Pilgrim a hidden source of water but only on the condition that he renounce God, the Virgin Mary and Saint James.

The Pilgrim refused even though it meant dying of thirst. At that moment, Saint James, also disguised as a Pilgrim, appeared and led him to that hidden fountain and using a scallop shell, he offered him water to drink. 

Eventually pilgrims walking the Camino began to wear scallop shells around their necks, indicating that they were officially on a pilgrimage.  For centuries, people were honor bound to offer food and shelter to people wearing the pilgrim’s shell out of respect for the holy journey, as hotels did not exist along the roads to Santiago de Compostela.

People have walked these pilgrimages for over 1,000 years.  And those caught wearing the shell under false pretenses as a way of entering homes to steal were put to death. 

The Pilgrim’s shell is still the official icon of the holy journey.  And so, we begin our holy journey at the place where the Pilgrim’s shell came into being.

If you’re interested in doing this tour with Caroline, then I suggest you sign up fast because  it will sell out quickly.

Here’s the link:
https://www.myss.com/workshops/exploring-mystics-path-soul/