We Are All Shamans: Interview with Itzhak Beery

I remember my calling into Shamanism.   I knew that what I was about to embark upon was going to take some work.  I believe though that my journey so far has brought more people into my life.  The lonliness of feeling alone with people around has fled.  I find that I'm more open to the stories or journeys of others and they find a releif in this.  My life seems calmer but it is still filled with it's day to day obsticles (more or less it's the money things that get to me).

Yes, I must say that my life is fuller now and I don't feel that feeling of being stepped on any longer.   It does take work figuring out the ways and laws of the Spirit that the Shaman tries to tap into and I have found people with great powers that have laid hidden.  But I'm no longer lonely... and the deep dark entities don't seem to be near because I don't allow them near... there seems to be enough darkness in people to take up strain.

I believe being a Shaman is about balance in the here and now.  It's about living in the fullness of your humanity as you live in the fullness of your spirituality.  You can't climb to high before the trickster will knock you back down... nor go to low without the trickster picking you back up.

The path of life is shared by a Shaman.  He is the one to keep all on the path of accepting uncertainity, the beauty of Spirit, he may have a way of showing the unknown that is only known to him.  But in the end he is human and he can take you down because of his selfishness or rise you up because of his giving.  He can heal you or make you sick... sometimes it's just your own direct actions set against him or her.

Yes, Zetz has a point and when looking back at my own life story and see the darkness of the institution of religion and see the abuse of Empire that has kept the individual and collective Spirit rising to it's full potential, well, I see hell and I look at the times that the trickster kept me stumbling down there always in search of some profound answer to who God is... to who the devil is.  I as a Shaman now leave the Great Creator alone.  I leave his answer to who The Great Creator is.  In the end it all comes down to the Spirit of things, the even plane that we are all connected on Spiritualy.  The daily talk of nature.  The movement of an individual spirit or collective one. Lonely?  Naw.  I'm more alive and in company then I have ever been.

The Shaman doesn't wait for the massiah in a lonely state.  He or she notices that the massiah that the little brother religions speak about is already here.  It is you in flesh and it is all is Spirit.

The Shaman knows who it is able to heal us now and this knowlege will bring out the best in the community or individual.  He or she also knows how to hurt... But above and beyond all he knows where your answer is for him to harm or heal.  You see maybe if you're a real good Shaman people will not come to you time and time again, you will find those around a Shaman free not to be so clinging to him... the good Shaman never has your final answer to your healing or hurt.  He'll give you a little of both if he finds you're getting to close to his answer.  And that may be why some people think it's a lonely life, because he or she knows that it is not the answer or opinion that he holds that will make you well.  The final answer is the one that dwells within... you.

Now go be happy and leave me alone!!!!  There are others.  Give yourself the credit.

Peace

P.S. I would like to hear other Shaman's views... Thanks Zetz for your answer.  It made me see the beauty within me of being a Shaman.  I'm free and in good company.   It's an ebb and flow... no doubt... I guess you can say if I packed a auditorium with people that called me friend, and called me their weekly answer, then I would have to say as a Shaman I was doing something terribly wrong.

Hmmm...  I like the few I have... to many and I begin to remember names.  And every friend that is searching likes to know that you know them.

As a Shaman, I read dreams well, but as a Shaman I have to know you before I know your dreams.  You have to stick around for awhile to help me find the answer that lies within.

May the Great Spirit guide us all to a better day.

Just so you know, I did not mean that as a 'slap' at you. I find myself slapping myself in the face now and then.

My point is, simply, that I find it pays to deem all 'shamans' as a safeguard against any subtle tendancy towards egoism. While I may not like everyone, that in no way would lead me to think myself so wise as to grant no probity to a particular wisdom different from my own.

I believe in love. Love is always, I find, seeking an inlet to our consciousness. And that it is in according to others what we enjoy as either insights or talents we let love in letting it out. In this process we needn't be simpletons. We can accord while maintaining that subtle form of self-protection represented by the raised single eyebrow while we turn our heads a bit . . . as if to ask: 'really?!'.

I have had periods of time in my little life where I often found the postures and attitudes and proposals of others often exasperating and even disgusting. And my own spontaneous vision in regard to this was very simple, but downloaded worlds of wisdom: a buffalo sitting serenely, flicking its ear at a gnat.

That was probably more about over-reacting than about the 'wrongness' of what bothered me.

"There is another kind of vainglory, which is an over-good opinion we form of our own worth."

From Montaigne, "Of Presumption".

I don't think Montaigne's essay under that theme hangs all together with perfect consistancy. He also noted that love can make its objects seem more perfect than they, really, are. Hence, the provisional nature of accedance. The raised eyebrow. The love I strive to understand is that love that sees the 'inner shaman' or 'brother' or 'sister' of equal worth quite beyond those often most evident 'imperfections' to which we recoil.

I believe we are given insights of an idealism that we appropriate to ourselves sometimes egoistically without really living them. Which may pertain only really to a part of ourselves . . . as yet unexpressed.

Maybe these insights are even only intimations of 'neighbors' we all have with us who have gone on and learned and whom have compassion on us. They stand in the background, we see them only from the corners of our eyes. They do not stand forth in full view lest we turn and begin to worship them and neglect our own work . . . our own unfoldments.

Yet this information can be striven after and finally really expressed. And thereby we attain a kind of new neighborhood or social conviviality with like-thinkers.

In doing so, we have not brought forth some specialness that pertains only to us. It is an accomplishment and we can take all the lessons that lead us to that point and forget them: deed done, lesson learned, character formed from esse to existere.

I wish to finish this response with a pertinent other quote, which I think is pure genius:

"What we call luck is the inner man externalized. We make things happen to us."
Robertson Davies

For good or bad, we unfold ourselves. None can confer upon us rights or potentials, which they enjoy, upon or into others.

[4th or 5th Re-edit. That's it.]

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"There is a principle which is a bar against all information, which is proof against all arguments and which cannot fail to keep a man in everlasting ignorance -- that principle is contempt prior to investigation." HERBERT

Hi friends,

I suggest to read "The Woman in the Shaman's Body"

http://barbaratedlock.com/

( I think/feel it's one of the best books on shamanism), by Barbara Tedlock, anthropologist initiated by a COUPLE (male/female) of authentic mayan "shamans" in Guatemala.

The misoginy that contaminated religious/spiritual studies is beginning to dissapear...the first shamans were women or, perhaps, men & women working together (Sacred Balance)...

Ah! I think/feel all of us are not shamans, but all of us can SHAMANIZE, to become SHAMANISTS, and a few people (like in music, etc.) become a "maestros", "virtuosi", if you like...

Warm greetings

Zorro

Pasito a pasito,Todo quiere ser querido.

Let me share an experience in self-healing. Separated from my husband back in January and was going through a period of depression about it a couple of months ago. I then had a dream in which I went to see a new massage therapist, who proceeded to lean me over her massage table sideways (as if she thought I was going to vomit) and she massaged my throat in a painful, uncomfortable way. I let her do it, though. Another M/T then came into the room and they started riffing on each other in a physical comedy sort of way, just cutting up and acting goofy. I was starting to get pissed because I paid for a massage but wasn't getting it. After a few minutes of cutting up, the first M/T came back to the table, pulled down the sheet so that I was naked to my hips, and massaged my sides for a couple of minutes (it was completely non-sexual, but I was embarrassed at being half-nude). Then the M/T went back to cutting up with her friend. I got up off the table, naked, and started edging my way around the room, keeping an eye on them to see what they were going to do. Presently, the first M/T looked back over at me and told me to jump up and down a few times. I did so, and suddenly I couldn't breathe--then I let out a big cough/gag and spit up some icky greenish-black sputum all over my hand... which also contained a silvery piece of metal from my almost-dissolved wedding ring. I needed a tissue in the worst way--there was about 3 Tbsp. of this digusting gakk on my hand. I woke up before I could wipe it off, but at least it was out of me. I did pause to wonder, later, if the healing came from inside me or was a result of an outside agency... I think it was me, but it doesn't really matter in the greater scheme of things, does it.

I think Zezt and Rogerscott are in the same boat here. The concept that someone can consider themselves a "shaman" or "witch" or "priest" or any kind of practitioner or wise-person is a completely personal identification. But the idea of declaring oneself a "knower" brings about an ego.

I think it is very important for our society and collective body to have leaders among us, teachers, etc.

But to quote the Tao:

"He who knows does not speak, He who speak does not know."

I think this is the root of many people's aversion to new age "masters". Any time someone gets a rise out of being a teacher or self-proclaimed master, there is the ego poking its head up to say "Hey!  Look at me!  Look at what I can do!"

True wisdom (as some have put it) is realizing that, as the Buddha said, if there is suffering anywhere in the world, then I am suffering. If there is ignorance in another, there is ignorance in myself. It's a dangerous road to profess oneself as a fount of wisdom without a STRONG dose of humility and reverence for the unity and spiritual equality of us all.

This is not meant to discourage teachers from coming forward with wisdom that we can all benefit from. However while the ascent to enlightenment is an individual path (the "shaman's way"), the greater evolution belongs to us as a collective. We are all our own "shamans" and we are all each other's teachers as well.

Or I could be full of it.

Cheers.

:)

I stumbled across a book almost 2 years ago written by a man who reports to have received instruction from deep within the lineage of naguals that Carlos Castaneda is a part of....the nagual Juan Matus...the nagual Julian...the nagual Elias...and on back (if anyone is familiar with the Castaneda's books and these names) The author, Lujan Matus, writes of his experiences of a corpus of instruction received by the old nagual Lujan...instruction given to him throughout his life via deep and profoundly clear states of conscious dreaming. I was skeptical, but curious...the cliche of those who are impacted and transformed but...there it is. Simply reading a few excerpts had a marked impact on me. The writing itself seems to coalesce from a depth of silence that I've never experienced before. It felt like the real deal. And after reading the whole work, there isn't a shadow of a doubt. The book is called The Art of Stalking Parallel Perception. I highly recommend it!