Cosmologies and Reconstituting Ourselves as Practitioners

Considering it's been a year since my last post, this topic seems fitting.

There are moments in our practices where it's appropriate and perhaps necessary for us to take a break: either because we deserve a well-earned rest…and/or because fundamental changes begin stirring our innards into rice pudding and we have to wait until we solidify into a new shape, much like a chrysalis.

(Common Crow Butterfly Chrysalis)

These moments generally happen when our cosmologies--that is, the stories through which we perceive and create reality--groan and creak under our burgeoning evolution. In some way, we have permanently or temporarily completed our explorations of these stories. Perhaps they are stories about good and evil, about the nature of reality, or about our place in the Universe. We face new experiences which don't reckon with our old stories, because these stories do not offer space for our expanding range of awareness. And when we have enough new experiences for critical mass, something catalyzes within, forcing us to spend time with Great Mystery until we hit the next Magnitude of Order in our path.

But why go through this? Why put ourselves through the grinder until we're reduced to metaphysical baby food? Frankly, it's dang hard to stay functional when your insides are pureed into protein shake. Why not just plow on using our well-worn machinery of perception and understanding--those trusty ironclad tools that have served us so well, and for so long?

Stagnation is not pretty. All of us have witnessed what it looks like in others: how the ever-changing, supple vitality that graces us as children turns into hardened cheese that's well beyond its expiration date. Perhaps we've seen it in our grandparents who refuse to give up old ways of thinking. Or in dogmas that do not account for the new ripples and patterns that are ever-emerging in life. Or people who hold onto jobs, relationships and insecurities for so long that their fear in losing these things outgrows their exuberance to discover new aspects of the world and of themselves. These are folks who have lost their abilities to engage with dismemberment in a good way. And without dismemberment, we cannot grow into the new selves that await us…that is, we cannot re-member the other innumerable aspects of ourselves that haven't had a chance to assume their places in our life. 

The more we recognize our multidimensionality, our multi-layeredness, our beautiful complexity, so may we better witness them in others. Not only are others honored and nourished by our accurate (and therefore loving) comprehensions, but such perceptions nourishes the perceiver as well. We eliminate the diminishment and mini-soul-losses that come from incomplete witnessing, that come from viewing people or events through too-small cosmological binoculars. More expansive recognition elicits a Win-Win which is the holy grail of shamanic living and practice. 

Why these musings of late? I've just come from another workshop from Betsy Bergstrom. It is a workshop I took 3-4 years ago on Compassionate Depossession and Curses Unraveling--but Betsy has expanded her explanations on cosmology and field theory. If it's been a few years since taking this workshop: Totally. Worth. Taking. Again. With a few years of practice under my belt, I found that I took things in more deeply. She unfolds much more information about practices we know and love. I got to witness all the different styles of practice while sitting in a powerful community field. I re-experienced what it was like to sit in the client's seat--always valuable for a practitioner. And as a fringe benefit, I received healings. 

Mulching our cosmologies (every so often) is an energetic dismemberment that allows for renewal. Our cosmologies are spiritual immune systems (more on this on a future post), so it's worth doing. When our immune systems are healthy, we use massively less energy to "defend" ourselves or to avoid situations and people. We naturally and effortlessly handle things as they come along--thereby allowing us to settle into our world in a good way.  

Last night, we (my husband, niece and I) went to listen to Martin Prechtel talk and read from his new book, The Unlikely Peace at Cuchumaquic. He was talking about another aspect of the huge subject that usually talks about—keeping what is living alive. This morning, it struck me how this attitude extends to the world of the Dead.

We often think about the Dead as beings who don’t belong here and therefore must be moved on, but instead of thinking about them in the negative (about where they don’t belong) it’s more helpful to think about how we are helping revivify them into the life that they’re now meant to live.

When we depossess a being or help a deceased person move on to the Destiny of Human Souls, what we are bringing them out of their limbo and bringing them back into life—back onto the course of their own destiny. Not life on this world, of course, but the life that their natures (as nonphysical beings) are calling for. Just as the living are charged with making life live in this world, they have their own part to play in the after-life—either becoming Compassionate Ancestors who help their descendants live well or in another capacity where their consciousness suits the force of their natures in the larger Cosmos of the Seen or Unseen Worlds.

In a manner of speaking, we are all seeds for one another. The living are the seeds germinating in physical reality, being cooked by our experiences so we can grow into Spiritual Sprouts for the next world. The Ancestors cultivate us in this way—exposing us to whatever conditions—whatever extremes of heat and cold, abundance or lack—we need in order to finally crack open and activate the most precious part of ourselves. The deceased are the seeds of Ancestors-to-be, and the Ancestors are the seeds of future generations as they inject our lineages with the accumulated experience and wisdom (the true blessings of the Ancestors) which sprout into life-giving attitudes and understandings that feed our wild blossoming hearts (often unvalued in the modern world).

Destiny is not a divine edict imposed upon us by a fierce and fearsome outside deity, but the dictates of our own true natures…when we unleash our True Selves (the Truth of Ourselves) into its wriggling, warm, untutored movement in this or another world. It’s Life feeling itself in the myriad forms.

When we release the Dead into THEIR lives, not only are we cultivating the field of life in this world (becoming being true gardeners and caretakers of this world), but we finally release the nutrients that our world has to offer to the next…for the Dead are the rich humus of experience and humanity that enriches the world of Spirit, which in turn feeds us back. The better we live, the more alive we come to this world, the richer the gift we become when we return to the Other World and therefore the more blessings we bestow on our descendants.

Another Quick Word on Victimhood...

I have STILL not figured out how to get comments viewed on the main page (though you can see it on each individual article page when you click on the article title), despite re-doing the layout to include a comments field. Any suggestions are welcomed.

In the meantime, a fellow shamanic practitioner posted this great article on victimhood by Lynne Forrest, who goes much further in depth on this topic.

As practitioners, it's really important to root out all the ways we play Victim, Rescuer or Persecutor--or at least stay aware of our own tendencies so we know when we've started down that slippery-slope and catch ourselves. Being practitioners, it's all too easy to (consciously or not) start as a Rescuer and feel trapped in an unhealthy series of roles with our client. We all feel when this happens: we feel a dip in our energies and suddenly don't want to work with a client anymore (even if we don't show it). It's a good vulnerability to plug up.

And if all that's not enough, it makes us better practitioners because we can recognize when our clients start making the rounds of this diabolical triangle. Being firmly rooted in our own understandings (and having resolved, or at least being aware of, our own tendencies), we can help them pull out (which may mean sending them to therapy) of it instead of tagging along and also getting caught in this disempowering merry-go-round.

Morphic Fields I

Juno was the Patron Goddess Ancient Rome. Most of us steeped in mythology know her as the jealous and wrathful wife of philandering Jupiter. But to the Ancient Romans, she was a living Being full of sharp and seemingly conflicting facets that mark so many of the supra-human gods of the day—gods embodying multiple burgeoning energies, untouched by the monotheism that tends to force-distill most modern folks into ever-simpler images of ourselves and our deities. 

Juno’s complexity still foxes most scholars today. She guarded over marriages, mothers and childbirth, families, love, youth and fertility. But she also protected soldiers manifesting their full vital powers. She is credited with defending Rome (and the sovereignty of all people) while leaders increasingly sought her tutelary guidance in matters of politics and war—even stepping in when the real king, whether human or divine, fled. In short she was more than human (perhaps even more than human understanding), and she was a major player in the Morphic Field of Ancient Rome. 

What are Morphic Fields? (I’ll give you my take here, but there is no way I’m going to cover this sprawling topic, so pull up your browser windows and do some Googling. It’s a term coined by scientist Rupert Sheldrake.) They are fields of energy that are habituated into certain patterns, understandings, and modes of behavior. They can control the growth of a seed into a plant, an embryo into a human or a fish or a rabbit (these biological ones are specifically called Morphogenetic Fields). They are why family members maintain semblance in looks and behavior. It’s what makes Paris feel romantic or Jerusalem sacred. And we can only connect to them through our Inner Senses—whether we use these senses consciously or not.  

Everyone both contributes to and are affected by the various fields that they are in (or are connected to). Every time someone breaks a new record in running a mile, it gets easier for others to do the same. At a party, you’re more prone to drink each time someone else decides to imbibe…and if you drink, it makes it that much easier for others to do so as well. Visiting your family home, you’re more apt to re-enliven the old childhood grudges against your parents than when you’re hundreds of miles away in your apartment. 

The term “Morphic Fields” has many siblings:  quantum fields, Genius Loci, strings, trances (as Adam Crabtree describes them in Trance Zero), Archetypes, Sacred Space, etc. 

In fact, Morphic Fields closely follow the way each of our own neuropathways develop—the more we do an activity (rollerskating, playing the piano, learning a new language, etc.), the more we myelinate those neuropathways, and the faster/easier/more-proficient we are at that activity.

What does all this mean? The implications are immense. It means that when you visit a place, you connect with all the habituations (and therefore the history) of the locale or a group. If you’re psychically sensitive, you may start acting out in uncharacteristic ways. Visitors to Jerusalem are prone to a religious mania called the Jerusalem Syndrome. It means that habits, or “thoughtforms” in shamanic-speak, in your family will either get reinforced by your behavior or you will introduce new patterns that offer alternate avenues to rechannel the energy. It means that we, indeed, co-create our reality and that we all share responsibility for everything “out there.” 

So, I’ll let this sit with you all. I feel myself wanting to go in a bunch of different directions regarding Morphic Fields and their significance—which means I have to take my hands off the keyboard now. More later…

The Larger Picture and Victimhood

Ah, why does she keep ululating to the tones of victimness when everyone arrived to the auditorium for the rousing Sousa hoe-down about Group Energies? Because resolving our own victim-consciousness make us stronger people/practitioners/friends/parents/leaders/etc. …Yeah, yeah, sure, sure… 

REALLY, though, it’s because Victim soul parts are not walking our destiny with us—they do not live in the present with us. They are younger parts of us that have not matured with the rest of ourselves. They are stuck in an event (and causal misperception) that leaves them with an insatiable need or craving—until we go back and redeem them (and fit them with corrective perceptual eye-wear). This is the REAL meaning of Redemption. It’s not about an external Hand of God reaching down and saving poor little us. It’s about assuming our own Godheads/Goddessheads to reclaim our suffering soul parts—even reaping meaning/significance/depth from our experiences. See the last few paragraphs of the last post.

What does that mean to have stuck soul parts? It means that there are fragments of us that act like Hungry Ghosts…the other end of spectrum from our Compassionate Selves. These parts of ourselves perpetuate (and perpetrate) their condition because they cannot get their needs fulfilled. They influence us (usually unconsciously), and we are entirely responsible for them. 

Examples of our own Hungry Ghost Self-Talk: “I would be so much better if only my husband would….” “Why does my boss have to be such a Wad?” “If my parents only understood me, I could’ve been…” “I can’t get a break; this world sucks.” “If my daughter would lose her attitude, we could have such a great relationship.” “If only I had someone to love me and I felt loved, everything else would fall into place.” These statements are so mundane, yet they create a background chorus that affect our actions, our attitudes, our intentions, our shamanic work, our family, our community, and our lives.

Don’t get me wrong. If you truly feel that your boss is a Wad or that your spouse is Miscreant, you need to start there…where your real feelings are. Don’t try to short-cut the process by staying “in the light” because that’s just a fast-track to denial and fake enlightenment. Instead, call for some serious Compassionate Spirit juice to hold space for your process so that vitriol can alchemize to gold—and be OPEN to whatever they tell you, even if they tell you things you don’t want to admit.

The common denominator to these statements is that they are holding the conditions of their happiness/fulfillment to an authority outside themselves. They lack the belief in self-authority (the capacity to “author” one’s life). Until we reclaim that belief, healing will remain a slippery slope.

If our goal is to increase our Compassionate status (and tie up all these loose ends), then we need to take care of these parts of us instead of demonizing them for causing us so much grief. We need to not mistake them for possessing entities just because we’ve disclaimed them in our determined march toward Enlightenment.

And, being Compassionate Spirit Releasement Specialists, we don’t want to leave behind any stuck or unclaimed portions of ourselves after death because we know better. We don’t want to leave Hungry Ghosts that may have no other choice than to band together with other resonant fragments and create aggregates that continue to affect our descendants or future generations. So all of those non-compassionate aggregate energies out there…yeah, we all share that responsibility. And now you can see how vitally the act of Self Redemption (also: reclamation or recapitulation) relates to Group Energy work.

So one more detail about working on the Victim…

One of the requisites to releasing ourselves from victimhood is to drop the idea of the Perpetrator—whether the perps are our parents, our spouses, our coworkers, our society, our not-with-it Ancestors, our teachers, our bosses…you get the idea. These are not opposing patterns, but extreme aspects of the SAME issue—in this case, the polarization of power and authority (at least, how our culture defines power and authority). Psychologists know that people perpetrate crimes because they themselves have been abused. It’s their way of trying to reclaim some of their lost power, albeit in terribly unfabulous, uncreative, ugly ways. In other words, Perpetrators have Inner Victims—they must if they act as they do.

And by way of side benefit, healing our victimhood opens the door for the other party to heal their perpetrator patterns because we’re unclenching the death grip that held the fragments of both parties locked in their respective Victim/Perpetrator roles. But that wonderful cascade of healing starts with removing the Victim mask from ourselves and the Perpetrator mask from “the other."

Before we go further, I need to state something outright. You canNOT force living people to give up their anger, hate, resentment, pain, and anything else that contributes to their victimhood. It is a huge task to release and heal these things, especially in this society, and if they’re not ready to take up this gauntlet then you run the very real risk of becoming their next Perpetrator by trying to force them into a process that they’re not ready for. You can give them things to consider to make an informed decision, but it’s ultimately the strength of the client’s Will that upholds any healing. And Free Will (another huge topic) is the final trump card in this world. It’s the reason why some people can sabotage their own healing, and have recurring “relapses” after leaving the healing room. 

Real power and authority (we practitioners hopefully realize more and more) is a very different thing, a very healing thing, a very Noble Warrior thing. It’s a Warrior thing to ball up your chicken guts and pull the Perpetrator mask off your “opponent.”

And the more of us that do that, the more we strengthen the Morphic Fields which can help pull other people out of their Victimhood. 

So here we are:  Morphic Fields…. Stay tuned for the next post. 

Victimhood and the Greater Intelligence

Before I go further into the Language of Victimhood, I post a caveat: Don’t simply try to manipulate your language or “be careful” about your language when you are in session with a client. Hunker down with some serious face-to-face time with your own vulnerabilities and victim mentality. That allows you to face the client with a substantial pot of authenticity, because emotionally intelligent clients will sniff out whatever doesn’t feel genuine.

The Language of Victimhood can insinuate itself in a lot of ways. (Again, don’t read these as formulas. Please feel into these statements and stick your pulsing finger on real differences in the following statements.) Consider: “Your mother put a curse on you when you were a baby because she didn’t want the responsibility of another child.” Versus: “It looks like your mother was really tired out by the time she had you. Being sensitive and open in your newness, you picked this up. It looks like your soul chose to have these experiences because….” In the first instance, the vehicle of agency is completely outside the client. Something was done to them. An outside force impinged upon their space and had its way with them. In the second instance, we’re showing them the larger order that’s operating in their lives. We’re reconnecting them to the Greater Intelligence that is always there to see if our perceptions aren’t too distorted/clouded. 

We begin to naturally see this Greater Intelligence when we have reconnected with the Greater Intelligence that has always been operating in our own lives…even during our darkest, in-the-shit hours. (Don’t worry, I’m not going to get all “Footprints in the Sand” on you.) And this comes about when we’ve gotten serious enough (a.k.a., beaten up enough) to do whatever it takes to heal ourselves…including giving up our unconscious, emotional hold on our victimhood. 

Furthermore, we’re pointing to the major issue of agency/authority. It’s one-sided to think it was “all on them,” just as we’re taking on too much to believe it was “all our fault.” In any significant event, there is a confluence of factors (whether random-seeming or not) and each must be treated according to the reality of what happened. If someone was furiously active in intending harm to the client, then that intention needs to be addressed. If the client has a vulnerability or a life-lesson, then that needs to be explored. But essentially, we’re tapping into a deeper truth: that this event (although painfully consequential) is an instance where the greater agencies of our lives (some combination of our souls, our ancestors, our cultures and/or the other group energies that we, consciously or not, are aligned with) get to explore and experience themselves.

I realized I just opened up a can of worms. I promise I will post on the topic of group entities later (probably many multiple posts), but I’m just not interested in writing an entire book tonight.

In most shamanic societies, most of this work was accomplished (in really big, really spectacular ways) through initiation rites and private/public healing rituals. You get plugged in to Spirit (including various group energies) in a good way, because the Initiating Elders knew that as you matured so did your spiritual attachments points. And if you don’t get plugged in consciously, guided by the power and love of wise elders and Compassionate Spirits, then you’re blossoming-but-unattended spirit points can end up like sweet heavy ripening flowers that attract who-knows-what. Yes, the possibilities are cringe-worthy.

Luckily for us, even amongst the disintegrating fabric of modern, iconoclastic spiritualism (or anti-spiritualism, or Objectivism, or atheism, etc.), there are group energies that cohere enough (and are kindly-disposed enough) to give us protection even when we’re unaware of their hard work. These include our Power Animals, our Teachers and, the most active for so many of us, our Ancestors. We all have Compassionate Ancestors—those who have matured and faced enough of their challenges to be firmly and irrevocably connected to God, Allah, All-That-Is, the Unity of All, or whatever other name you give it. We also have non-compassionate Ancestors: those who act more like everyday humans with everyday human concerns, wishes and values…and who have not yet “seen the light” of the greater truth that holds us all. And they (with all their intentions, both loving and selfish) affect you to one degree or another.

This goes back to why it’s so important to tend to the Ancestors and to heal our Ancestral lines. Why it’s important to begin a solid relationship with our Compassionate Ancestors so that we may heal those who haven’t quite made Compassionate status. Why we want to make the time and energy to support the Compassionate ones in their work. It’s what all our Ancestors passionately want (albeit some more consciously than others), and hopefully you’ve now seen how this is deeply in your own interest as well.

Part of how we become more and more effective tools for our Compassionate Ancestors is to become more and more compassionate humans ourselves. (Compassion does not mean having a bleeding heart for everyone in pain. On the contrary, it’s about unwaveringly knowing that they will be okay and pain can be healed if they have the will and we have the chops. Compassion is not a soft undefined cloud of emotion. It’s tough, edgy stuff.) In other words, we start connecting our spiritual “hook up” points to compassionate energies—including compassionate group energies. And in order to hook up to compassionate energies, we need to drop our lingering ideas of our own victimhood which stop us from getting plugged in to all the right energies. To the degree that we see ourselves as a victim is the degree to which we cannot be Compassionate (in this particular use of the word). Why? Because while wounds and victimhood carry a reality for us (that’s one of the reasons for being in this world, to be able to explore what these things mean), on the deepest levels it’s a lie. We cannot assume our own Godhead/Godselves while believing that we’ve been victimized because that part of us can’t be victimized. 

So, now I’m out of juice and it’s almost tomorrow. But I will keep posting on this sprawling topic. It’s a huge subject to discuss and not very linear, but maybe we can start getting gears cranking on the larger topic of cultural healing that we practitioners must face.

Night, night.

Curses and the Language of Victimhood

It’s a long-standing tradition in indigenous societies to visit your village shaman if you thought you’ve been cursed or spiritually injured by another. These injuries usually came at the hands of a sorcerer, a paid agent of one’s enemies. We modern folk, who have worked long and hard at civilizing the “savage” in us, dislike such talk because it raises the hackles of ancestral superstitious impulses that we want to think we have long buried (and don’t ever want to see again).

Middle World practitioners know how alive and kicking these impulses are—however much grave dirt we may try to throw on them. It’s not EEE-VIL, really. It’s human. It’s human when you harbor ill-will toward that mean aunt who just took away your favorite toy. Enough 9-to-5-ers have a Voodoo doll of their bosses inside their skulls that they torture in order to relieve the burden of their unjust serfdom. For that matter, how many corporations have cursed their clientele with goods that are intentionally fashioned for profit and not for the benefit of the populace. It’s part and parcel.

Thoughts are things, we’re oft told. If we can heal ourselves or manifest our wishes, then it stands to reason that in the great balance of the Universe, we can also harm ourselves and manifest our nightmares. Pollyanna thinking is ineffective when it denies the actuality of what’s going on. If we stick our fingers in our ears, pinch shut our eyes and start reciting positive mantras, we’re shutting ourselves off from the world of reality and (here’s the kicker) we’re doing it because deep inside we’re scared of what’s REALLY going on…meaning that the root intention of our actions (our rites) is the validation of what we fear. (Yeah, read that last sentence again.)

So again, it behooves all people (but practitioners especially) to closely examine the seeds of their actions—even when it’s wrapped in bright-and-shiny denial.

. . .

The validity of curses need to be handled with level-heads. After all, we can scare more soul out of our clients by filling their minds (not yet hardened by initiatory experiences) with stories about curses and possessing thoughtforms…thereby leaving them more vulnerable than we found them, and to the very things we're trying to help them with.

But how do we talk about how curses without freaking our clients out? The very nature of curses implies intention to harm, injury, vulnerability, unjust causality, existential uncertainty and fear of the unknown. A big mosh-pit of human chaos.

The strategy some practitioners enforce is:  Do the work, but don’t talk, think or otherwise mention it ever again. Perhaps this works for some, but I’ve always sensed, as a client, when this sleight-of-hand is operational (and this was even before I ever began practicing shamanism). The subsequent dissatisfaction left an unquenchable thirst to know the truth…a thirst that I also see in many clients. Because not telling them what’s really going down is equivalent to telling them that neither they nor the practitioner (in your best Jack Nicholson voice, now) can handle the truth. 

And what does it mean when we can’t handle the truth? If truth isn’t the thing that we’re handling in a shamanic session, then we might as well register in an Actor’s Guild. “Can’t handle the truth” means that, in our shamanic work, there is not a presence, a consciousness, a wisdom, a power that’s present/conscious/wise/powerful enough to handle what’s really happening when someone (intentionally or not) curses another. So. Not. True.

Illustration: When a kid has gashed their shin or broken their arm, and his friends run from the scene screaming bloody murder or lifting their open palms to the heavens at life’s incomprehensibility, it deepens the kid’s sense that something is majorly (perhaps irreparably) wrong. On the other hand if an adult comes along who (while sympathetic to the pain) knows exactly what to do and tells the child, in a knowing way, that everything is going to be okay then the pain can be borne without panic. 

Illustration 2: This even works when the child has been the target for intentional misdeeds. An adult can either get hot-under-the-collar and deepen the Mini-Me’s sense of injustice and wounding, or the adult can help bring the child to understand some valuable life-lessons, take appropriate action, and teach her how to effectively deal with such situations--all with the understanding that these things happen...and the quicker we learn to take them in stride, the easier our lives will be and the faster we can get on with more important things like friendships and growing into the people we’re meant to become (instead of meditating on the wrong-doing and possibly perpetuating the victim-pattern throughout life). 

Where does such mature, wo/manly attitudes blossom? In our own hearts and minds when we deal with our own pockets of fear and victimhood…those little (un)intention seeds inside the happy-go-lucky ideas of ourselves that we maintain to preserve functional sanity. It means going hammer-and-tongs into our own history (personal and ancestral), peeling back the glossy layers, and realizing that we can fix the unfixable. We can stare into the gullet of our deepest fears, and (while the ride can get wet and wild) we come out of it okay—enough times that we don’t pee our pants each time anymore. In other words, we’ve initiated ourselves (with serious Spirit help) and passed the guardians of No-Can-Do, Too-Big-To-Fix, and Just-Live-With-It. 

[Equip yourself properly and take some solid Middle World training before undertaking a meeting with such guardians...Betsy Bergstrom's classes are excellent.]

To the degree that practitioners don’t take their Hero’s Journey into their fears is the degree to which they will continue to buy into and therefore perpetuate the Language of Victimhood through their clients. At best, such language evokes a commiserating sympathy and at worst sustains the client’s victimhood—and those who come to practitioners to commiserate aren’t interested in actual healing because they’re not done with their victimhood. Serious Gotta-Heal folks want to run to the hands of reassuringly adept, mature practitioners. (I know, this can create an overwhelming Middle World learning curve for newbies, but at the least this Darwinian process ensures that only tenacious, scrappy and effective practitioners make the cut…another guardian to pass.)

Braggadocio and (blind) Positive Thinking doesn’t work. Neither, really, does Fake-it-till-you-make-it. Only the solidity that many pee-free self-honesty sessions impart will give you the aura of knowing, compassionate adult that the vulnerable crave. In a rocking shamanic session, not only is the practitioner’s Truth-O-Meter active, but so is the client’s. So faking it won’t wash (and frankly, I don’t know how any practitioner can get away with it if their Helpers are standing around with a burly Truth stick at the ready), or it will register with the client at an unconscious level and cause anything from irritation to anxiety. 

The reality is that many Middle World practitioners (the butt-naked honest ones) will be scared shitless for a bit. So we should all take heart and keep facing the challenges that appear on our path without getting t0o down on ourselves. After all, if the Spirits choose us, we’re meant for this work. (Read Martin Prechtel’s last chapters of _Talking Jaguar_, and he will tell you the same thing about his first years as a shaman.)

I’ll continue this discussion next time about some of the implications of rapidly initiating and maturing ourselves.

Sacred Space and the Archeology of Motives

As with surgery, in shamanism we want to maintain clean workable spaces when we roll up our sleeves and get elbow deep into Soul. We want to create Sacred Space. It’s such a basic principle of most indigenous shamanic practices, and yet not something often talked about in trainings.

For many of us, we have routines—perhaps setting up our altars, honoring our spirits, maintaining power objects, smudging the room, and calling in the Spirits. But even in situations when such elaborate routine is not possible (ICUs, for instance) the one sine qua non for setting space (besides the presence of the Spirits) is our intention. Our intentions provide the “rules” or “guidelines” of the playing field in which energy runs. (The actual mechanics is provided by our cosmologies, but that’s another post.)

A practitioner is the main power object in a healing session. S/He is the power object for the Spirits. We anchor spiritual realities into the physical world. Being a power object is a capacity everyone has to varying degrees, but shamans are born (by agreement) and beaten into serviceable shape for the Spirit by initiatory experiences. They are therefore effective power objects for the Spirits.

Human beings are in a privileged position—we are Spirit but we are also players in this physical realm. While the Spirits affect us, they don't grease all the squeaky wheels of this world without our help because the human sphere of the Middle World was set up for us to learn through Free Will, Choice and Awareness. This is why, in most cases, only the living can help the dead if they haven’t crossed over after a time…because we are the ones responsible for setting the space in the human portion of the Middle World. 

A practitioner is a power object, but a power object with history. Power objects with histories are mixed bags. Some have gathered much healing power over the years, but in most shamanic cultures they often are considered dangerous enough to outsiders that they must be buried with the owner. Those who attempt to use these artifacts usually need to purge enough of the original owner’s energy from the object before they can use it.

In our case what we need to purge are our motives, and our motives are tied to the artifacts of our history and psyche: our wounds and insecurities, our needs and the world’s inability to meet them. We’re matryoshka dolls, and we can’t assume that what’s within us is a mirror to our conscious intentions. Our motives to heal and do right may carry deeper personal needs (feeling power or wanting attention) or ulterior motives (proving that I am a good person or that I’m worthy). And unless we’re aware or have mechanisms to deal with these surprise-centers in our chocolate box, they can end up messing with our space setting in small (or not-so-small) ways. Intention is tied to motive.

Consider the above issues seriously, but don’t freak. The reality is that intentionality is a skill that we all need to hone and re-hone, and we’re always going to find surprise-centers. Being a responsible practitioner doesn’t mean being perfect or “pure,” it means taking responsibility for what you know and don’t know about yourself. Meanwhile you can make an agreement with your Helpers to face and work with your hidden motives, provided that they keep them clear of the space during a shamanic session. Learning this skill can be bitter medicine, but if we’re not afraid of the passing discomfort we can come out much better practitioners.

Cosmologies and the Virtuosity of Senses

Let’s say we are fully alive to our senses and we’ve begun to experience the vibrancy of everything around us. Now what?

For most people that is enough. Their ripening senses underscore the preciousness of all things and validates their being—the oranges that deliver sunshine, the oceans that cleanse us, the earth we plant ourselves on, the trees that greet us every morning. We are precious in how we feel and appreciate these things, especially in this world where so much of Spirit goes unnoticed. Spirit finally witnessing and loving spirit. Once the pores of our sensoria open, we can finally saturate our parched selves in the juices of Spirit. 

For practitioners, this is just the first step. We’re not only nourished by Spirit, but we’re also instruments for Spirit. That means we cultivate a virtuosity in our senses so we can actively and accurately hear the messages all around us. Our awareness allows us to siphon more information from our surroundings, our clients and our Helpers—which means our actions can be more thorough and effective, in a way that benefits more of Life.

We also need to know how to handle the impressions that aren’t pleasant without freaking out. (People who have sensation-overwhelm should take the Mediumship class with Betsy Bergstrom who gives the best instruction I’ve seen on this.) We freak when we have no handle on a situation, when our cosmologies can’t deal with the information we’re being given and we therefore have no appropriate response. This is where PTSD can come in. If we’re not successful in making sense of something, it get blocked out—and before you know it, another one of our senses shuts down and gets archived into the dead zone. 

Our cosmologies are living things that need space to grow, to handle more of what we witness as our senses (and therefore spheres of knowledge) open up. Sometimes we just need to flesh out what we already understand through our experience. Other times, we need to drop our working cosmology (the machinery through which we do our shamanic work, and the landscape in which our Magical Selves operate) in order to take up a new one. This takes courage and beaucoup assistance from the Helpers…in fact, it’s usually instigated by them. But without this renewal, we get prone to what Roger Walsh calls “Truth Decay”—the dogmatisation of a living reality. 

Magical Thinking and Our 360 Senses

Ancient Egyptians believed that full humans (which may mean people who have run the gamut of initiations) have 360 senses. Mind Scrambling. My marbles roll confusedly on the floor just thinking about it. Okay, so we've got five down...more or less. Rupert Sheldrake tells us that sixth sense has been appropriated by scientists to categorize the way that animals use the magnetic, gravitational and electric fields to detect migrate, detect prey, etc. (and there has to be at least a few senses stirred in there). Sheldrake goes on to coin the term "seventh sense" to engulf all the other extra-sensory perceptions like clairvoyance, precognition and telepathy (the three that he focuses on) and describes how difficult it is for researchers to tease these three apart.

Those of us who have taken classes from Betsy Bergstrom knows that there are different types of extra-sensory perception like clairvoyance, clairaudience, clairsentience, clairolfaction, instant knowing, etc. If we stretch everything out to its extreme, we may come up with almost 20 senses that we know of. The implications of this are immense.

Ancient Egyptians had an understanding that we do not know a concept or thing until we knew all aspects of it. Quick calculations say that the most astoundingly psychic of us would know only about 5.5% of anything. This is where humility and the Great Mystery come in.

Do you remember when you were little and you made something, a picture perhaps, and you showed it to someone who didn't appreciate it or thought it was just clutter? If this happens on a regular basis, eventually that special something that we had (that we put into the picture) withers and goes dormant for lack of recognition, acknowledgement and feedback from the outer world. It's like it didn't exist. Eventually, we ourselves forget about it. This, my friends, is soul loss. Lack of perception can engender soul loss.

What happens when we walk the world, appreciated only for the quantifiables: money, possessions, appearances, career, etc.? What happens to all of those non-goal-oriented parts of us? What happens to the peach-lick toed, mudlicious, creamy nougat, juicy joy parts that could: feel what Christmas Morning was, sniff the change of seasons, eat the sunshine in an orange or allow the undulations of the sea run through our bodies as we stand on the beach?

This is what makes life worth living. Jobs and possessions allow us to live so we can experience the world in our own way, to feel these things and thereby become one of the tongues of God/Goddess/Allah/All-That-Is that's busily licking our own scoops from the 5-gagillion flavors of the Great Baskin-Robbins of Life.

Such people, each in their own way, contribute to the experience of the greater whole of which we are all a part. So it behooves us to help people find their destined scoop of life and regain their abilities to enjoy it--because at the deepest levels (where our commonality finally trumps our divisions) we are enriched by their experience too.

Quote from the Ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead

"Weighing of the Heart"--Book of the Dead of Sesostris

Death was not quite the same thing for Ancient Egyptians as it is for us modern folk. Their attitude towards it didn't engender fear, revulsion, existential questioning, or late-night rounds of Jack Daniels. It engendered wonder, reverence and a deep connection to the Spirit World whence we issued forth at birth and where we return at death. It brought awareness to the Ancestors who came before and the place of the long-ago time that still lives in the Duat, the place where souls travel after death and where their Gods live.

As someone who works with the dead and dying, I found the following quote from the Egyptian Book of the Dead to be moving and meaningful. This passage was written for the person who dies and thus re-enacts a ritual/transformation of his/her return to the origins. It speaks of some of the awesome beings who assist the dead. It is written from the perspective of a dead soul who stands "naked" before his/her Ancient Progenitors--death having stripped a soul of any cloak that hides the truth of who they are. And it puts the life of that soul into a greater context.

It shows what many Middle World practitioners understand: that death has aspects (some glorious and beautiful) that are understandably missed by the survivors who are in their grief.

Perhaps these words will be meaningful for you too.

I stand before the masters who witnessed
the genesis, who were the authors of their
own forms, who walked the dark, circuitous
passages of their own becoming. . . I stand
before the masters who witnessed the 
transformation of the body of a man into the
body in spirit, who were witness to
resurrection when the corpse. . . 
walked out shining. . .when he came forth
from death, a shining thing, his face white
with heat. . . I stand before the masters who
know the histories of the dead, who decide
which tales to hear again, who judge the
books of lives as either full or empty, who are
themselves authors of truth. And they are. . . 
the divine intelligences. And 
when the story is written and the end is good 
and the soul of man is perfected, with a
shout they lift him into heaven.

Ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead
(Normandi Ellis Translation)

The First Ancestor

Who are the First Ancestors? We’ve already seen the downside of not tending our ancestral lines  (see previous post), but the oldest cultures hold a special status for the First Ancestors, the first Humans who lived millennium-long lives (or were immortal), maintained incredible wisdom without written language, and taught the civilizing arts to those who came after.

Nearly all old religious texts contain stories of these Ancients. They lived hundreds or thousands of years (check out the Old Testament, stories of the Egyptian Shemsu Hor, or the really old Bodhisattvas who are supposed to still living in the hills or mountains somewhere). These Ancients taught skills for humanity to live in a good way and to explore/fulfill their capacities. And they are considered divine or semi-divine.

Isn’t it interesting that the glyphs in Egyptian pyramids and Mayan temples seem to have sprung fully formed onto the walls of these awesome monuments (monuments which modern machinery would have trouble reconstructing)? Unlike most civilizations after that time, there is no evidence of writing or glyph-work that evolved from cruder to more sophisticated forms. What about the fact that pyramids were erected in these two seemingly disparate civilizations, and in both cultures these pyramids symbolize a woman lying on her back? This begs two questions: where did it all come from, and how do I get plugged in?

Gustav Klimt - Tree of Life

Anthropologists (the good ones at least) recognize that indigenous thinking is inherently different to modern thinking. While we tend to think of things linearly (that old Hegelian model of steady advancement and progress), indigenous folks think of things circularly in that everything has a cycle and everything must be renewed by ritual. 

Some rituals, especially communal ones, in indigenous societies re-enact the events of that First Time (Egyptian: “Zep Tepi”) in order to renew and replenish aspects of their current world. They align themselves with the powerful compassionate Ancients, and thereby also re-enact the creation of their world—that is, they are re-birthing themselves, making themselves anew, replenishing the world, and re-affirming their divine or semi-divine origins. It’s no wonder that these societies cooked their creation stories into the bones of their youth, for these stories give their people strength and meaning throughout their lives (see my post: Myth, Meaning, Ritual and the Daily Grind). Joseph Campbell, Robert Bly (“What Stories Do We Need?”) and many others recognized this need for the mythopoetic dimension: the dimension where the Ancients dwell...and where we practitioners work.

Michael Harner once said that: while modern society tends to look toward the newest things as the apex of culture, shamanic cultures look to the oldest. Indeed the challenge for modern practitioners is, in addition to our defined roles as bridges between Ordinary and Non-ordinary Reality, we also have to bridge between a time-and-culture long forgotten and a time-and-culture that is trying to outdo itself in being totally unlike its predecessors. 

We modern folks often turn away from our predecessors because we don’t want to incur the same mistakes as our dowdy great-aunts or our workaholic parents—so we conscientiously attempt to fashion things anew. The results are all around us—good, bad and ineffectual. But what if each of us has an Ancestor, a First Ancestor (as we all must have originated somewhere), that carries unbounded wisdom, skill, compassion and power? And if we enlist such an Ancestor, then how insurmountable are our problems really?

If you haven’t already, you can sign up for Christina Pratt’s workshop which is coming up in a month to get started in this amazing aspect of shamanic work.

Ancestral Healing (and Healing Ourselves)

Christina Pratt is holding a class on Healing the Ancestors which is something that most humans have neglected to do for millennia. Some of us practitioners have been noticing an awesomely looming backlog of owed ritual and general care-for-the-dead that we keep trying to scoop through with our proverbial teaspoons in private sessions. As a culture, we don't collectively build the kind of ritual backhoes we need to effectively help greater numbers of people because most folks don't even know how to heal their own lineages (practitioners included). We have this insidious notion that we can outrun our pasts--especially if it wasn't our own but those of family long dead and gone. We are, after all, a nation of immigrants and self-made people.

But as you get older and perhaps have the luxury to get reflective, you might realize that you're starting to manifest symptoms of an old disease that "runs in the family." Or perhaps you find yourself thinking about how you're "just like Dad," or "Mom," or "Grandma," or "Crazy Aunt Edna." Or you wonder why is it that no one in your family seems to have luck with (fill in the blank): money, love, marriage, children, friendships, career. With some or many of these patterns, perhaps you think, "I really don't want to be like that" and yet haven't made much headway in fulfilling your wish.

Psychologically excising family members doesn't usually solve the problem, you may have noticed. Doggedly reframing your life in a radically different style/class/religion/subculture may work for a while but what happens when your kids/grandkids start "reverting," or you notice that you're somehow missing a piece of your life (and not feeling the kind of happiness you'd expect from having 'escaped').

If we're to stop pouring energy into our coping mechanisms and use it more fruitfully on resolution, then more people are going to have to take responsibility for the dead in their families who have not properly crossed over and therefore have not been properly honored. Whatever is true for our ancestors, will also be true for us when our time comes unless we start educating ourselves and others on these responsibilities.

Our Ancestors can be some of our greatest spiritual allies:  tending to the souls of ourselves and family, assisting in fulfilling our destinies, helping raise the next generation, giving us answers to "unanswerable" questions, or protecting our interests in a way that benefits everyone and everything. Yet, they cannot tend or even relate to us in a good and right way unless they have first been crossed to the other side and allowed the process that helps them achieve Compassionate Spirit status. While some die well and make it to the other side, many others (in their confusion about death and its nature) do not, ending up as "hungry ghosts" who end up depleting or wreaking havoc on the living.

While this may cause many a worried brow, we don't have to fret about death. We fear that we cannot remediate a situation with the spirits of the dead. But all remediation begins with taking responsibility. For practitioners who are ready to take up this inevitable and necessary step of healing their ancestors, then this workshop is a good starting point to begin their education regarding the dead.

Altars

We all have ideas of what an altar is. A place of religious worship in a church, perhaps. Or maybe a nice cloth on a dresser with many meaningful and/or religious objects, a place we pray or wish, hope, or care for another. In any way, it's a microcosm of a much larger field of things that have impact and influence over our lives and we go to or maintain altars in order to remain in touch, in good relation, to these things.

The Egyptians also had altars. Really, really big ones. In the realm of Archaeoastronomy, which is slowly gaining acceptance even among crusty Egyptologists, there is an understanding that the Egyptian structures on the ground were reflections of stars and constellations and the attendant spiritual significances. For instance, the Great Pyramids are in the configuration--both in size, position and proportion--to Orion's Belt (see Robert Bauval's books for more information). In fact, all of the major structures can be aligned with the star formations of the sky during that time in Egyptian history. And the stars and constellations had tremendous importance in Egyptian cosmology, ritual, and even everyday life.

Altars give physical forms for forces, powers, feelings, etc. that are less effable. And if that's the case, we can think about all of the ways that we make physical the forces that influence us. When we write a letter, we anchor feelings and thoughts into words. When we paint or draw, we commit inexplicable urges/feelings/thoughts/concepts onto the canvas. When we talk to another, we manifest ourselves and/or a connection with another through our voice.

And if we're to take seriously the theme of the Ancients that Humans are Temples, then we too (in our very bodies and existence) are altars. The question, then, is not IF we are altars, but WHAT are we each altars for?

Magical Thinking

In neo-Spiritual thinking, we are awash with messages of love and light. And while they may provide temporary solace for many, only spiritually actionable thinking can actually change something of this world to better suit and reflect us. Real and persistent forces are at play in the world, and while most of us feel powerless to do anything about larger societal issues, we ALWAYS have sway over our own. And if we feel powerless over our own issues, then we return to our proverbial drawing board and see what has stopped us from recognizing the choice we have over each decision we make.

All of us (who are honest) have gone through periods where we feel small but palpable influences that seem to wear away at our sense of selves, our sense of being engaged with our destiny and the world, and the understanding that we have the power to do something about it.

Could it be that magical thinking, the childhood mechanics that we're constantly told to put away in our adult years, be the place where our power lives? Or perhaps magical thinking is simply a haven where all of our powers go after we've been called ridiculous or idealistic too often.

Note: Magical thinking is NOT the same as fantasizing. We fantasize when we feel powerless and we need some avenue of not-this-world-ness to give vent to unrealistic stories of how we're going to get our power back--such as winning some love who represents who we want to be, or becoming suddenly popular and famous and showing those bullying former classmates what is what. When we think magically, we KNOW that we are in our power and that the actions we take (even in those small and simple ways) change the world around us in non-cause-and-effect ways: you know that helping that beetle out of the watering can has somehow made the world warmer and friendlier, or that wishing upon that star made something happen. And that is what I think (for now) is at the heart of shamanism.

If you were lucky enough to have childhood moments when you felt the wonder of such things (and you're not so repressed that you've blocked them out), then you know what I mean. If you haven't had these moments, or you don't remember them, then it's probably a good time for you to get yourself over to a professional Magical Thinker and Doer, a.k.a., a shaman (or in this society, a shamanic practitioner). Because honestly, I don't think that people can have a sense of their own real power without some experience exercising their magical machinery (and I'm not talking about the domination flavor of power which is ultimately false--although it can wreak havoc nonetheless).

You practitioners, this goes for you too.

Who Are the Clients?

As I was preparing for a session today, which was arranged through a serendipitous series of moments by the Spirits, I realized that my main clients are the Spirits. I'm their mediator, their advocate, etc. And that during the honing phase of being a practitioner (which I now realize doesn't actually end), I had to get enough guts to do some of the things that they were asking me to do: "Really? That's what I have to tell them?","You want me to go WHERE for to retrieve a soul part?," "You want me to start researching WHAT?" etc.

Initially, I freely exercised my right to refuse and had plenty of excuses in my pocket that I would pull out like Get-Out-of-Jail cards. But as time went on, I realized that HAD I followed their advice from the get-go, things would have flowed a lot easier for me, for my human clients, and thusly for the world, the Universe, etc.

So, I go along with them more because I've tired myself out trying to pick up the pieces of refusing the first time.

Part of this had to do with not knowing what my role was EXACTLY as a shamanic practitioner. Obviously, the Spirits are the ones that do the work on the soul. But it's not accurate to portray me as just the chopped liver of a healing session. Nor is it accurate (or advisable) to get maniacally He-Man-like and think, "I have the Power!" and act like it's all me. On my drive to the session, I realized that what I am is more like a boat-builder. I get together the parts and make the vessels (which includes the sessions, the practitioner, the clients, the setting space, setting intention, etc.) that allow for the Spirits to do their thing, to get to their destination (which is chosen between them and the clients).

So that's where I'm at today.

14 Shamans Killed in Loreto Region in South America

By now, most of us may be aware of the kinds of forces that go into destroying the indigenous cultures. For those that don't, you can read Confessions of an Economic Hitman by John Perkins--an engrossing book that looks into workings of governments, private interests and misdirected religious efforts to eradicate what isn't profitable or appreciated.

At this time, we need all of our healing capacities to be active and running in the world. Even if some don't understand the larger scope of what this means (including those that perpetrated these killings), the responsibility falls to us who are aware enough to do something about it.

On an outward level, we can write the US Ambassadors, the Peruvian Ambassadors, Amnesty International and the Peruvian government to do something to restore order. Prejudicial killings destabilize a region and prevent much needed support to the families of those villages. Shamans are the cultural repositories for indigenous cultures--knowing and relating deeply to the plants and land in a way that most of us have forgotten.

Shamans hold a direct living connection to Spirit which they hold out for all people in their community and the world at large. They continue to work in their own corners of the world to enliven a world that can progressively deaden when only material goals are valued.

"Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly...this is the interrelated structure of reality." - Martin Luther King, Jr.

Myth, Meaning, Ritual and the Daily Grind

All the elaborate rituals of many of our ancestors seem so time and energy intensive that most of us today can't imagine investing so much on things that don't further our lives in material ways. But ineffable returns are still returns, and it's just we haven't developed the internal structures to appreciate how they apply to our lives.

The rituals were meant to connect us to a deeper course of life, to connect meaning to things that become otherwise tedious. Thus the actions we perform daily (like washing dishes or weeding our gardens) become outward expressions of an inner order.

Myths are master events which rouse and engage another order of our consciousness. They speak to us in ways outside of our normal experience because they are acknowledging a level of being that is too big to fit into our everyday world. The more reflective of us know that there are wilder, more heroic parts of us that ache for expression. Perhaps a sense of destiny that can't reap satisfaction from our lives as we know it.

Perhaps if we knew more of our own nature, the nature of the food that we eat, or the land that we walk on (all things that are encoded into myths), our everyday environment would take on a significances that make life more interesting. And that's because some part of ourselves (outside of our bodies and rational minds) then participate in our lives. It's how we shoe-horn more of ourselves into our world.

Common Era Shamanism

Of all the spiritual traditions, why shamanism? It's a tradition that was everywhere before there were established religions. It goes under the ossifications and operates at the living level of an individual's and a culture's personal relationship with the Sacred. And because it goes meta, it doesn't cling to forms as much as speaking to the deeper layers of being both human and Spirit.

Shamans are Technicians of the Sacred, according to the Dagara Elder Malidoma Some. This means that they are allowed behind the curtains to look at the levers and gears that run our spiritual heritage. What this means is that we get some hands-on knowledge regarding the spiritual. And while this evokes images of kids playing inside a Panzer Tank, we have to find our way to learning about the Sacred and cultivating enough largess to allow mistakes from ourselves and others.

In other words, we don't simply worship God, Allah, All-That-Is or that Highest Power by whatever name you give it. We get to know Him/Her/It/They. We start to extend a sheepish hand to touch the steadfast one that has alway been held out to us, without middlemen. And we we begin to find the meaning behind the worn spiritual maxims (such as, As Within, So Without), discovering the web of implications that these maxims spawn in this world.

It means that we're no longer children, no longer needing to take other people's spiritual word at face-value. Instead we gain experience and therefore mature in our own right, learning to see the truth for ourselves.