Shamanism, Anarchy, and the End of the World
This article originally appeared in Fifth Estate.
After twenty years of teaching shamanic practices to small groups in several circles in Washington and California, I found the results to be mixed. In the groups in which I participated, there were many moving visionary experiences, but the flabby jargon of the human potential movement left important messages missed amid incessant psychobabble.
Contemporary shamanism, which grew out of the human potential movement of the Big Sur-based Esalen Institute, rapidly became subsumed into the New Age culture as the latest fad/religion. In two or three decades, aided by workshop leaders, it has become lost into the pop culture. While the permutations were endless, pervasive alienation remained a constant. As always, money, sex, and power ruled.
That shamanism has been compromised is not to say that altered states and working in trance cannot offer us a personal healing direction. I know from experience that lives can be changed through shamanic work. A deep trance, engendered in a variety of ways and entered with intention, can be transforming.
The value of shamanism as taught in the contemporary culture may be that it provides some level of psychotherapy, some level of energetic balance, some palliative response to stress along with feelings of community and slightly less alienation. In some cases, shamanic practice may provide actual healing of disease or easing of struggles with death.
My own struggle with shamanism centered on skepticism and the understanding that we can fool ourselves into believing almost anything. My training was in agriculture and science. I was not one to accept much on faith. I continued to bounce between shamanic visions as projections of the psyche and as visitations from a separate spiritual world.
By the time I stopped teaching a few years ago, I had come to understand that the distinction probably didn't matter. My work and studies since have convinced me that contemporary religious and psychological shamanism represent part of a catastrophic human error which took place at the beginning of history, and that contrary to the notion that it has been around for tens of thousands of years, indigenous shamanism is more likely a transitional phase between the consciousness of hunter gatherers and the alienation of contemporary state religions.
Lives as numb wage slaves
Faith healing comes in many costumes, and shamanism is one of them. We can wear skins or robes. We can beat drums or play pipe organs, burn sage or incense, sing to the element of water, or submerge ourselves in the river. Both the "laying on" of hands and sleight of hand can be efficacious. We can sing to our bear or sing to Jesus, whirl like a dervish, whip ourselves until we bleed, play with rattlesnakes, dance in the sun for four days, or starve ourselves in caves. Take your pick. Each can make less painful our lives as numb wage slaves.
If we can ignore that tiny voice crying for real freedom and calling us back to the circle, our economic and religious subservience will help us pretend to be something more than the imprisoned domestic animals we are.
A large problem remains. Shamanism, or any of the other religious choices as currently practiced, will not turn us from the global abyss. To believe shamanism and religion can bring about some form of planetary healing is much like the notion that more technology will solve our environmental problems. Transference, sexual abuse, misinterpretation of serious pathologies, and lack of ethics, all typical of the human potential movement, combine to further alienate and separate.
Benign attempts at healing by unskilled and uninformed devotees, while perhaps not causing serious harm, can impede solid, long-term movement toward better health. To put it plainly, shamanism draws some seriously crazy folks, and many leaders are happy to look the other way as long as the fees are paid.
Contemporary shamanism teaches vertical, hierarchical religion
For those of us arrogant enough to assume we have mastered this reality enough to explore another, our shamanic practice should pull us toward radical anarchistic action. We've been hearing from, and paying huge workshop fees to shamanic leaders for decades about "connecting to spirit," but their message sidesteps industrial capitalism, the religions to which it is connected, and open, public, radical changes flowing from our spiritual work. The reason for this omission is clear. Contemporary shamanism teaches vertical, hierarchical religion. The focus is on what Mircea Eliade, in Shamanism, Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy, described as the "journey," rather than presence in this biological world.
Agriculture, religion and government have not brought us a better life. The price we have paid for these abstractions is far too high. The amusing charm of a small transistor radio hanging from a tree in an upper Amazon village belies the toxicity of the poisonous little gadget.
Writings of Morris Berman, Paul Shepard, Joel Kovel, Stanley Diamond, John Zerzan, David Watson, Derrick Jensen, Lewis Mumford, and others have led me to conclude that we should not be attaching religious symbolism and meaning to shamanic experience, but instead should seek a practice which takes us to the awareness that preceded the alienating beginning of agriculture and religion.
We should attempt a return to what Berman calls paradox, free of time and language. Even brief experiences of integration might help us build decentralized communities centered on our insight.
Return to "primitive wisdom"
An intentional use of altered states can obliterate the duality that has led to the domination and destruction of our world, an experience of unity, what Sigmund Freud called the regressive "oceanic experience," what Jung called a progressive return to "primitive wisdom," and what Morris Berman, in Wandering God, termed the "paradox" of hunter-gatherer consciousness, "a diffuse or peripheral awareness," and in his earlier book The Re-enchantment of the World, called "participatory consciousness" in which "the sacred, such as it is, simply is the world."
Unfortunately, shamanic practice as taught imbeds us in pathological constructs. Linear, vertical thinking has brought us to disaster. If we leave religion behind, trance practice can lead us to an egalitarian culture of biological integration. We must reject the religious rituals and notions of upper and lower worlds. We must cease our efforts to ascend and return to living completely here, in ourselves, on this earth, as integrated beings.
The dominant power structures under which we exist are only too happy to have us live in the illusory and impotent condition of duality, and most humans will sit and do nothing during this time of inexorable unraveling. Only a few will work to recover our history as integrated, wild beings.
Our hunter-gatherer ancestors are still close. Wiser and healthier than we, they are calling us back from a technological and religious cliff. Small, egalitarian, tribal circles of paradox can return us to the awareness of our ancestors of 10,000 years ago, before they unwittingly brought us religion and planted the seeds of our destruction.
We can reject the linear, oppressive, hierarchical, and alienating forms of religions that have swept our world and begin to live in an archaic, anarchistic, sustained way that begins to heal our planetary home.
We must be done with leaders
We need not travel to other realms. We must learn to step through a barrier and arrive here. Trance brings us home. School is in the garden, the forest, the prairies, the rivers. The teaching we need will not come from priests, gurus, shamans, or scientists. Our circles must be egalitarian and built on a solid mistrust of all power.
We must be done with leaders and their overwhelming lusts for money, sex, and power, impulses so integral to our culture they routinely go unnoticed. We must find ways to explore our way home without the intervention of individuals and organizations that propose equality on the surface but simply duplicate the power and alienation they've learned in the academic and capitalistic culture.
A Taoist nun once said, "There is no practice." I think she was right, for those who have already merged with the living world around them. For the rest of us, if we sing, dance, eat our plant helpers, and there are spirits who care enough to help us return, they will. If we don't impose our notions of sacred, goodness, power, and importance on our visions, ourselves, and the other beings we encounter, we may be able finally to rest.
The rapture is not a naked ascent into heaven. It is a naked return through a diaphanous membrane to our wild, natural, biological home.
Image by Monsiuer Haze, courtesy of Creative Commons license.
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- 8-14-08
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Comments
Gebser.
Good article. I've read Derrick Jensen's stuff, and I've seen him speak. You're work here reminds me very much of his Anarcho-Primitivism. An idea that is interesting for sure, but I am more of a Gebser follower in the sense of transformation. Reform and return will not work. While progress is not the correct term for what we need to survive and thrive as a species of "full" humans, mutation perhaps is.
I have great trouble with this idea that we need to return to some idealized past that is 10,000 years in reverse. Politically and economically (from wholly rational-ego-based standpoints) I am in full favor of some form of Anarcho-communist or Anarcho-collectivist movement, but the cynical and jaded American in me doesn't see any of that happening without some kind of painful and bloody struggle. A struggle, honestly, I'm not sure I could involve myself with in good conscious.
Jensen's work on violence is convincing, but every time violence is used for change, it always seems to amount to nothing more than a transference of power and material from one group to the next. Not for what I seek.
In terms of religion and spirituality - I love what you had to say. It would be lovely for us to learn to integrate the Spiritual World with the Material World a la Steiner. Perhaps that's part of the Integral Consciousness Structure that Gebser discussed. I do hope I'll be around to see.
Pain
"A struggle, honestly, I'm not sure I could involve myself with in good conscious."
Do you see how this culture lives right now? This isn't exactly non-violence-ville. As a matter of fact it's quite the opposite. A wholesale slaughtering of human, plant, and animal life is happening. Right now. What is this culture moving towards? Right now. And we are all involved on some level. The only hope is that we can begin to get on with the healing. As the slaughter goes on, ever increasing, ever expanding, ever more violent and bloody.
I hear a lot about the "understanding that all things are connected" and "love for the planet and human life" and "I would never perpetuate violent, karmic cycles etc." Come on.... No really, come.Yes, as a matter of fact,
Yes, as a matter of fact, I'm quite aware of how self-destructive, violent, and acquiescent *this* culture is. I take it that you mean Western Civilization for the most part, because therein one finds the most developed instance of the rational-ego structure of consciousness with its adherence to patriarchy, domination, and subjugation.
I'm not quite sure what led you to believe that I think this is "non-violence-ville" as my entire post was discussing how I find it difficult to agree with any counter-ideology or counter-hegemony that would use violence as a primary means of transformation.
I'm really not sure what you're criticizing that I said.
Mmmm
No worries, amigo. Such
No worries, amigo. Such is the nature of the digital message board - you miss one verb, noun, or conjunction, and wham-o, the pacifist becomes the fascist. :)
Anyways, I just started reading Jean Gebser's The Ever-Present Origin a few weeks ago. It was written in the 1950s, and I swear it could have been written yesterday. The book (all 6 or 700 some odd pages of it) is really phenomenal. Its one of those books that's giving me wonderful new lenses through which to see the world (the same way that 2012, A Secret History of Consciousness, Food of the Gods, End Game, and The Secret History of the World all did for me over the past couple of year - just to mention a few), but its just a spot different. Why? Because its brutally dense, no-punches pulled, straight up out of the academy style writing. Its essentially a book on esoteric philosophy that is so well researched, reasoned, and argued that it takes a long while to really pace yourself through it.
Okay, enough with the superficiality. The book is really about what Gebser calls mutations in the structure of consciousness that have occurred over the course of human development. You know how the Christian's claim the world is only 4,000 years old or something? After reading the first hundred pages of Gebser's work, you start to understand what they might be talking about. He discusses that man has gone through several mutations in the structure of consciousness with which s/he approaches the world. He terms them in several different ways:
Also:
There are other ways, and if you're interested I'll pull the book out and list 'em out for you. Just let me know. Anyways, the whole beginning of the book is an exposition that attempts, through the use of evidentiary art, literature, and mythological discussions, to, in a guarded way, empirically justify this theory. It is quite illuminating, and several times I had to put the book down for a second, because I realized I was going through a profound transformation of what I thought was the real history of the world.
I certainly can't do justice to Gebser in this post, but he discusses how over the course of the last several thousand years (wo)man has gone through several profound mutations in the structure of consciousness. From magic (wo)man who didn't so much possess an ego, was at one with the rhythms of nature, communicated telepathically and operated through a sort of group mind. Then came mythical (wo)man, who while still part of the natural cycles of gaia, began to individuate her/himself and understood the world through the dictations and muses of the Gods and other sentient mythical beings.
Then, I think over the course of time from around 600BC to 1400AD (culminating with Da Vinci's brilliance) man's consciousness mutated into the Mental Structure. The real ego appeared and man lost touch (consciously, but never wholly - because, remember - the origin is ever-present - kind of like in a Be Here Now Ram Dass kind of way) with nature, and began to see the world as something to conquer.
All of this history of consciousness structure is laid down to set the stage for what Gebser terms as the burgeoning new structure of consciousness that appears to have been in its initatory birth-pangs in the early 1900s, and, quite obviously, is emerging today at a more ready pace. He discusses concepts of diaphaenity and the "concretion of time". Essentially, with each new structural mutation in consciousness, (wo)man begins to reorient her/himself to a new dimensionality. For the coming integral consciousness, Gebser believes in a sense we will begin to understand time as an everpresent dimension like the 3 dimensions of space, and lesser as a one-way river.
I hope that's a decent introduction. I'm not wholly done with the book, but if you're at all interested - I really can't recommend it enough.
Oh my
Excellent.
Yes, yes, yes. I heard about Gebser and Jaynes in the same book by Gary Lachman, The Secret History of Consciousness. That was three years ago, and I'm just now onto Gebser.
You won't be dissapointed!
Integral Consciousness
If you are interested in Gebser, may I recommend Ken Wilber. Particularly the book Sex, Ecology, and Spirituality. He attempts to bring together Gebser's work with the work of countless other researchers in psychology, anthropology, biology, and spirituality, and to demonstrate that the integral level of consciousness has already arisen, albeit in less than 2% of the current population.
I know I pimp him a lot on this site; I certainly don't agree with everything the man says...but Wilber most definitely has points that *must* be taken into account for any 'truly integral' model of reality.
As Wilber himself says, "A good theory is one that lasts long enough to get you to a better one."
"You must *be* the change you wish to see in the world." Mahatma Gandhi
Nifty.
Thanks for the recommendation Chibi. I read Wilber's No Boundary, and I enjoyed it. I'll have to look into Sex, Ecology, and Spirituality when I'm done with The Everpresent Origin.
I think that the whole 2% number makes some sense, and its probably growing daily. I'm fairly sure in Gebser's day, he saw it beginning to bud in some individuals as well.
Good DIalogue
Sam Michael
TO return to the garden or to slash and burn our way further through the jungle, that is the quesetion? Interesting Article, Dave Hanson I have some mixed feelings about the perspective of the article, that shamanism and shamanic journey is vertical and hierarchical, obviously it might be in an improperly run workshop, but the notion of the power of the individual to make this tremendous cosmic journey by him or her self is a redemptively egalitarian notion for any religion in my book. You obviously are concerned with exposing the degradation in quality of shamanic practice, as in all praxis, from my own experience in martial arts and yoga as well much could be said on the need for genuine practice. It is on us to restore and maintain these traditions to the extent they continue to be of value. In your article you make a clear distinction between shamanism (Which you argue to be a production of cultural disruption), wherein much emphasis is put on trance state, and a more primal spiritually manifest dreamtime or communal everpresent sacred now. Now these are both tremendously interesting phenomenon. Let us argue that shamans are only necessary when the shit hits the fan, then do pre-shamanic people have a need to take intrepid journeys, did Adam traverse through heaven and hell while in the garden of eden? Was shamanic healing necessary before time began? There are answers to this question- Animals have extensive pharmakopeia- Gorillas and apes certainly are acquainted with many more plants than the average city-dweller. What do they learn from these plants, and are not many shamanic traditions based in the lore of shamanic animals, bear, deer, etc? Shamanism is a loosely defined reification of of activities that are defintely pre-human and I don't think it is valid to claim it was initially conceived through cultural disruption when many shamans to this day literally retell how they were taught this or that plants existence by the bear or the elk. A true shaman uses trance states as a tool but never leaves the sacred life out of time, They climb up and down the world tree but return to the ever-present omphalos navel of the world.
Ah
Radical Non-duality
Radical Non-duality
Overall, I agree strongly; with the caveat that, after surfing that wave for a while, you begin to realize that all these waves are all part of one ocean. And it's the ocean that is truly real, and that really matters.
Up.....and down.....
and, in the end, its only round and round...
When you have reached the core of your awareness, and you turn that awareness finally and totally upon itself, you find that nothing is anything but you -- and you are nothing but everything else.
"You must *be* the change you wish to see in the world." Mahatma Gandhi
Ditto Zest
I'm curious
A problem of design. One solution.
Waiting for some technological magic bullet to save the day is an element of our cultural programming. There are things we can do now to reduce our dependency on Centralized Solutions.
One Example.
After HVAC, refrigerators use the most electricity in the house. However, they're not designed very well. I've hacked a chest freezer to work as my fridge and it uses as much electricity as a 100 watt light bulb that's left on all day. Here's some info.
http://mtbest.net/chest_fridge.html
Here's the thermostat I use:
http://www.amazon.com/A19AAT-2C-Freezer-Temperature-Controller/dp/B0002E...
Most of the machines that we're dependent on were designed when resources like oil and coal were cheap, plentiful and we were living in a dream world.
Redesigning or learning how to live without many of our machines is something we can do now.
Decentalized Power
The technology for us to be independent from coal is already here. Nanosolar is a company that has developed solar power to be as cheap as coal.
It's great tech and I hope someday we'll see these on everyone's roof... But... I think it may be too disruptive to ever see the light of day ;-). From my perspective the current fossil fuel / utility infrastructure is too closely tied to the ruling elite.
If there was real tech (and there is!) that gave you and I true energy independence the impact to our current social order would be immense.
I remember Rushkoff saying somewhere that the tech is here we just don't have an economic model. We live in a commodities / scarcity based model. Solar energy is abundant and can be free. We just aren't currently living in an economic or social model that's congruent with that tech.
Thank you, Dave
Thank you, Dave. This "great return" to the Earth is inevitable, I feel, in order to solidify our existence in greater consciousness. And every person will feel this, and they will have to, in order for this balance to continue.
If a shift does not happen in the next few years, then we might have to wait a long time before the opportunity arises again. Yet, if we listen to Nature, and the Earth, will it not guide us in ways that expedite our return?
Right now, with so much fact and structure ruling our culture, it would do many good to begin communicating with their intuition, trusting that, perhaps, they are always where they need to be.
At the turn of such great happenings, the unprepared masses will feel like a massive two-by-four just whacked them across their head, and probably wake up with a headache. But they will feel it, nonetheless.
Has anybody picked up Novalis' "The Novices of Sais?" It could be one of the most important perspectives of nature ever written, and it was so over two hundred years ago. Too complex to be put into detail, it simply carries a devout listener's energy, of one who took the time to engage, question, and exist within his atmosphere and the nature of all life around him. I was exhausted after reading it through in one sitting. I highly recommend it to anyone with an interest in this direciton.
Yes, but
Oh you Gurus...
We already have all the knowledge inside of us. If you are trying to be like your Guru you will never get there.
Spiritual life, unlike material-world life is yours and only you live it. Are we just trying to imitate what our Ego sees as a beneficial behavior and not truly try to ask ourselves the only question you will ever need to get to a spiritual epiphany: "Who am I?" This is when the eyes truly start opening, bringing down the tower of cards that is our Ego.
The Guru is you.
Dave Hanson's Nightmare
Shamanism and courses and money… I don’t buy it… I just don’t get it and in a way I believe Dave ends up discarding Shamanism and embracing the monk life of Buddhism with as much noise as one wants to make -- that there be no teachers and that nirvana will just simply appear without a thought, or right action, except for picking berries and hunting rabbit… In this way of thinking Dave has loses all quiet and health of the Spirit and has embraced Mumockbeeism.
The roles we must play in the tribal way must just come and will come by just being who we were all meant to be. But he has ruled out the complexity of the being human mixed with the simplicity of the Spirit of Life. People are all so different that it wouldn’t take long for someone in Dave’s world to begin abusing the system he speaks of because of power, sex, money etc… Contemporary Shamanism does not teach vertical, hierarchical, religion. Contemporary Shamanism teaches freedom from those things if done correctly and with the purpose of showing us that the sacred, such as it is, simply is the world and that the Spirit of Life, the Great Spirit, The Holy Spirit, The Spirit that connects us all connects us for a deeper meaning to unfold our full potential to better those that will come after us. It is living in uncertainty and understanding that all is coincidence.
I never took a course in Shaminism but I call myself one. I often wonder who taught the first Shaman to be a Shaman. My calling came to me in a series of dreams, this was last March, and then it was given to me on what journey I must take in this biological world. My totem is the bear and through the bear I am beginning to totally comprehend my direct connection to everything living. And through coincidence, which I find is given through the Spirit, I have come to further practice and understand Shamanism. It is good and does bring healing and does bring people together in a healthy way. It gives them awe in the sacredness of life.
It is good when those you touch begin reaching out to touch others. Mr. Hanson’s conclusion to finding utopia is, as he writes, “If we don't impose our notions of sacred, goodness, power, and importance on our visions, ourselves, and the other beings we encounter, we may be able finally to rest.” I find his conclusion funny because I can look out my window now and see homes where people have become so lonely and mentally screwed because our notions of sacred, goodness, power, and importance on our visions, ourselves, and other beings are not being imposed on our neighbors, our friends, or our loved ones. They are resting in quicksand because the Shaman has not taken an active role in the community, circle of friends, or family.
Those who have been awakened to the calling of Shamanism must now move forward into the life of people searching for a human touch of Spirit and healing. If you don't teach them sacredness someone else will... Our biggest teacher today, and the shame of it all, has become the television and that is an illusion of what real scredness is.
Shamanism is not a money maker. Take as many courses as you want. When your called you are called and when you’re not you are not. Can we begin to envision communities where there is a Shaman that lives in the neighborhood and people go to him or her to heal… and the wounds to be healed in this day of age are complex and sometimes and it takes much time and relationship to figure some things out… it takes a journey with people who have lost the ability to create. Many people today have become mumuckbees.
Who was the one that taught the first Shaman his or her practice? I believe it came to him or her as a dream of a better way of life that had become so insane with envy and jealousy and materialism and abusive group power being controlled by an unseen few. And the first Shaman knew that his hands, the power to reach out and touch, and feel, and rub, and hold was beginning of all healing. And this dream came into being because the notions of the sacred, goodness, non-abusive power, and importance on our visions, ourselves, and the other beings we encounter were not being used and people had become Mumuckbees.
And what is a Mumuckbee? Someone that has forgotten about his or her own Spirit of Life, and they walk through life only gathering berries and hunting rabbit and think “That’s it… now what should I watch for the next five hours tonight on this spiritless screen because my mind needs numbing out of this total consuming hell I call paradise.” Mumuckbees have forgotten their connection to the sacred and to each other and to the Spirit and to the earth. Their hands do not touch the sacred as they must, and when touched by a sacred thought, or hand, they flinch as if it hurts.
We are living in Dave’s Hanson’s dream… just look around at all the people talking about the sacredness of their lives and then watch them as they flinch or pull back or fall asleep watching the evening news.
Peter,
Peter,
I think this was a great rebuttal, and that you really fleshed out some of the negatives that Dave seems to be working through.
One thing though:
You write, "I find his conclusion funny because I can look out my window now and see homes where people have become so lonely and mentally screwed because our notions of sacred, goodness, power, and importance on our visions, ourselves, and other beings are not being imposed on our neighbors, our friends, or our loved ones. They are resting in quicksand because the Shaman has not taken an active role in the community, circle of friends, or family." I have trouble with this only because of the semantics of the word impose or imposition.
I certainly can't speak for people en mass, but, for me anyhow, anyone that tries to impose their beliefs, feelings, practices, ideologies, dogmas, well-intentioned advice, etc. is a complete and immediate turn-off and tune-out. I have to agree that those individuals that have discovered their own spiritual paths are currently elusive in our societies, and that we, as a searching spiritual community (those of us that seek and perhaps some on that cusp of that search) could use more guidance.
However, it is the individual that must seek that help, and hopefully s/he can find it through the compassion of a willing shamanic friend. I am of the bent that every one of us has our own path to follow, our own route to blaze, and while the presence shamanic (or any other trailblazing assistance) help would probably make this transition to the integration of spirit, matter, space, and time somewhat *easier* (for lack of a better term), it is only the individual that can come to the conclusion that that is a path worth seeking out.
So, imposing, impose, and imposition seem, in a real way, as sort of an autocratic, authoritarian, or despotic means to show people that light. A means, I think, that would like do nothing but backfire. And while I doubt that this is what you meant when you replied to Dave, I felt the need to address this little semantic foray.
Folks are going to need to find their own way, but along that way surely we will all need to cooperate, share wisdom, and exchange advise. Viva l'open source spirituality.
Confucius say...
Do not impose on others what you yourself do not desire. — Confucius
Remember...
Tell Your Friend...
"A man stands at a window all day and all night. When he tires he turns out the light and goes to sleep. Upon waking the next morning, he turns on the radio, and hers the news of a ship crashing of the coast and over four hundred people dead. He feels so so so guilty that he dies because he did not do his job through good times or bad... Why does he feel guilty?"
And then ask your friend to ask them this... Imagine that a man no matter his race, nationality, or age had a series of dreams. Now imagine this man's first dream was he dressed as a bear running up a mountain and when he reached the top, a spear went thru his chest, and he then awoke knowing that dream was telling him something special about himself. Now imagine this same man who may be a Lakota, or not, had another dream in which he was in a room with warriors of every nationality and he was being pushed and bumped around for not being American Indian enough by the American Indian Warriors. And imagine still in this dream that a American Indian Shaman walked up to this man and blessed him with the biggest hawk feather one has ever seen.
Now imagine in a third dream this man saw a totom pole and carved on the bottom of this totom pole was a bear and then nothing carved on the pole three or four levels above the bear but on the very top was the face of a what the man only knew to be a Shaman....
Now imagine that this man also heals at times too. Ask your friend to ask them how without ever meeting a Lakota they would help this man discover his true identity which he should then label himself. Is he a medicine man or Shaman?
And you tell your friend to tell the Lakota if they didn't get the riddle... here's a hint... the ships are coming in. What shall we awaken too? Ask them what tribe is manning the lighthouse.
return to Earth home -- how? (shaman capitalism?)
The warrior
There are few willing bodies capable, few willing minds, many willing spirits, and many is... many, I've seen this.
There are few who will ride into the belly of the great breast. There are few whose feet will leave the ground and fly high enough to reach its mind. Many brave spirits, though, many.
When my body dies I go to the land of the spirits. My work is forever healing as spirits do, forever but there is no burden.
When my mind dies I go to the world of stories. My honor will carry my deeds for endless nights on the tongues of my tribe.
When my spirit...
When bodies die, they are gone. Minds die, gone. Spirits do not die, but renew by their very nature.
It is not so easy to battle when there is something to loose. That's where a warrior comes in. Peace
~BeTween uS~& ears~
Your prose
in this passage is particularly beautiful. The description glows.
1 size fits all
Thanks
The mask thing... Thanks for the reminder Mr. Moore
Nobody has ever danced the Bear Trample Dance before... ever! How can you help me? I need the mask or head of a bear to bring his medicine to others as I trample into dust all the addictions, worries, and problems (in the form of sand) tossed in a dancing circle of drummers before I dance them into dust.
If anyone can help me with the mask or head or if you would like to send me a box of your addictions, worries, or problems -- I'll make sure it gets into the center of the circle.
The bear head or mask will be worn with dignity... as he crushes the addictions, problems, and worries of all. It will be good medicine.
Send to: Peter "Sunturtle" Deane
6331 Cambridge Ave. #3
Cincinnati, Ohio 45230
P.S. If you have any questions you can email me at peterdeane@zoomtown.com.
All are welcome to attend... Thanks, and hope to see you there. You can also dance, if you like.
Sorry, if the post is a little off subject Mr. Hanson but just felt this was a good place and time to ask.
Pretty rad.
I would certainly run with that as a good enough example of mutation. What I was referencing was mainly Gebser's idea of the emergence of the "integral" consciousness structure through what he terms a "mutation." I think what you discuss, Don, is something akin to Man realizing that Time is not unidirectional, but rather ever-present in our experience.
While currently we only "know" time as a uni-directional river, if we could begin to understand it like one of our spacial dimensions - we would be able to navigate it in similar ways, access to past-lives memories, etc. The whole idea of the 4-dimensional consciousness presents us, with our strictly 3 dimensions/time model as having many contradictions, but, I think, this is due to the fact that much like examples in Flatworld, we simply cannot understand it before we begin to experience it.
I'd also like to say this is no reason to just sit around and wait - the world still burns, and we must do our best to put out the fires no matter what our current state of consciousness is.
Hey now
"Especially if some of our memories were from a FUTURE past-life."
That's absolutely beautiful
No need for apologies.
"Sorry, I ass-umed that you were thinking what I was thinking."
And in many ways you were correct. I love the way you see the possibility of reincarnational rememberance playing itself out. It's givin' me a great deal to ponder over the last couple of days.
we've got it simple
Desktop-theoreticians
Cit from article:
"The rapture is not a naked ascent into heaven. It is a naked return through a diaphanous membrane to our wild, natural, biological home."
Apart from this being one of the weakly supported dogmas manifesting on RS from time to time, I can also add:
Guys, 80% of you wouldn't last a month out here, where I live. Stop talking, start DOING.
Doing
Well, I can see a macho pissing match possibility here, but sometimes I’m just not able to stay out. Let’s see, what have I DONE?
I grew up on a farm and was doing much of the work by the time I was in high school. I got my first degree in Agriculture, paying my way through college working in the woods as a logger and playing drums in a dance band. I then went into the military and jumped out of airplanes for awhile, followed by operating a cattle ranch. I worked on horseback a lot. Every year we drove cattle 5 days to summer range and back. Real cowboy stuff. Back in college I got credentialed to teach high school science and spent the next 15 years in the classroom, teaching in South America, Micronesia and Polynesia, as well as in the states. Then, back in the family lumber business I began building houses. As a beginning builder I did it all. I framed, roofed, finished, plumbed and wired them. I don’t even know how many houses I built, in Oregon, Washington, California and Texas.
On a site far from any infrastructure I built a house in a wild area of Panama. I shipped all the lumber on a banana boat from Miami to Puerto Viejo, CR, trucked it from there to Almirante, Panama and loaded it all into dugout canoes which carried it to the site. I built the house over the water.
I suppose, just to compare penises here I should also say that I used to hunt. Killed lots of wild animals and ate them, to say nothing of the various cattle and pigs I was slaughtering for the family table before I got out of high school. Then there’s sex. I was single in my 40’s. It was heaven. I was active. Man, the stories I could tell. Did a lot of drugs too. Never met a drug I didn’t like. I won’t even tell you what I did in Colombia. You seem to think you are a tough guy. Have you ever lived in Leticia, on the Amazon river? Now there’s a town for tough guys!
And there was shamanism. Serious work in an attempt to help others and make the world a better place. Twenty years of it. Believe it or not, shamanic healing is hard work.
A short word about pain. I’ve wrecked my body. Surgery on shoulders, hands, prostate and melanoma, along with one gunshot wound. Osteoarthritis pain all day, every day.
I spent most of last summer on the Lakota reservation at Pine Ridge, building a strawbale house for a homeless native man, perhaps the hardest project I have ever undertaken, but worth it.
Anyway, have I DONE enough? Is it okay to rest and contemplate how a change in consciousness could bring about some healthy changes to this screwed up world? Meanwhile I think I would survive quite well in your world, wherever that is. It is my experience that people who talk about how tough they are, usually aren’t. Watch out for the quiet little guy down at the end of the bar. I'd be very careful about telling others what you think they can, or cannot do. They will surprise you every time.
As to the "weakly supported dogma" in my essay. It is not "dogma." Check your dictionary. Those notions that have the most "support" in our culture are precisely those which are bringing us to disaster. I want to consider something else. But, if your world works for you, keep on, toughly.
This is so silly, but it is raining hard and I can’t work in the garden.
Dave
Psht...
Uh, yeah... but you've never killed a man with a trident.
Amateurs.
Nice Job
Today my son came home and told me about his snake dream and how it bit him. It was after I had the dream about him and the scorpion that did not bite me.
I told him about his totem (the surpent). I now am seeing these events for what they are.
My first whole healing was a crack whore last week with a kidney stone. She left me with a story about her life that she never told anyone, she left me with more cloths then when she came, she left me with a painting in her hand -- the one that I use here on reality sandwich to identify my image. And she left my home without a kidney stone. She left me with the sound of a rattle. I could only think of the power of the human touch, and herbs, and good thinking, and good laughter, and good believing.
I never thought I was a bear... until I had a dream and realized it. My son never thought he was the snake until today, in a dream.
And today we went over who brought us in and nurished us... For me it was the Turtle... For him the Buffalo. Then we spoke of who had protected us... for me it was the Hawk and for him it was the Wolf.
And today, my son told me the dream, that I recognized as his totem... he is who he is, and after understanding the medicine of the serpent, he came to accept his totem... As I had to accept mine.
Anyway, Dave, I just want to say nice job in doing well in finding who you are... And what's your totem? You were with the Lokota.
And just one last question... can you ask the Lakota the questions I asked that one person that said he had a friend with the Lakota?
Ask them also if they, the Lakota, could help me with my Bear Trample Dance. In the end it's all going to be for the healers of the world. They are truly the children of The Great Creator's Spirit.
And just would like to say, to Dave, a personal "thanks" for everything.
Peter "Sunturtle" Deane
P.S. I never messed with the quiet little guy at the end of the bar. I too knew better.
Re: Dave
You'll do. You obviously belong to those 20% who WOULD last here.
('Here' is more along amish-lines, though I personally am as religious as a tin of spaghetti).
The mantra: "Nature, the great redeemer" is part of the dogma, I mentioned. The to me unexplainable modern mythos, which has strong likenesses to christian cosmogony ('good creator=good universe=end discussion').
I quite liked, that you didn't try to get-holier-than-me, so maybe I later (a day when it's raining) can tease you into a discussion about WHY 'our wild, natural biological home' (and not the non-empirical experience), is a way to (Truth? Reality?).
Re: cj
Apparantly someone with mysterious ways wants the wheels of the universe to keep running.
Conception vessels are a small act of genius for this.
As W.C. Fields once said, when asked on his opinion
on sex.
"Well..., I think it has come to stay"
The Spirit World
Howdy Dave,
Stimulating article and thread!
You said: “My work and studies since have convinced me that contemporary religious and psychological shamanism represent part of a catastrophic human error which took place at the beginning of history...”
I agree. Seems to me that the fundamental differences between religion, science and shamanism is in their view of what rules the universe. Religion clearly puts god, an entity that is supposed to have created it all, in that position. Science puts the human animal, by virtue of its rational brain, in the dominant position.
Original shamanism was based on worship of the local environment, through the ingestion of plants, and the “spirit world”, thus accessed. Modern shamanism usually lacks this foundation. Thus we find the neo-shaman looking either to god or the human brain for his/her power. Neither religion nor science understands, the “spirit world”. In fact, both reject the spirit world altogether; religion labels it evil and science denies its very existence.
The System doesn’t care. The environment trudges on, in spite of the burden of bad behavior from its brightest children. It continues to process the information of Life, using the holographic communications network that connects it all together, known in some circles as the spirit world. We surely can’t go back to prehistory, (on purpose, that is), but we need to change our priorities based on a better understanding of “the System” and our place in it. Worshiping the environment instead of an external god or internal neural electrochemical reactions would be a step in the right direction.
cheers,
jim
LifeOS: exploring the system that executes DNA
http://lifeos.wordpress.com/
Swimming in Spirit
Howdy cj,
Swimming is good. We are all in it up to our ears, some cling to the flotsom like it was a boat, others try to navigate according to their outdated charts. I think you are right, the flow has all the answers.
Telling it like we see it is our duty. I'm nodding my head, reading your stuff.
cheers,
jim
To CJ
Seasons have come
Seasons have passed
A circle formed
Again alone… Round
Seeking more then centered
Urged to fly forward and sing
Begin a square in a new circular ring.
The book is complete
The chapters are closed
In the hands of others
A poet's story is told
Seeking only to dwell
In soaring hearts & head
Ventures in the vibrant... life.
Pockets are empty
Souls sinking with urge
A head barbed in dreams
A heart between beats
Drowning in hope
Wishing only for a cord
And a strong influence
Making sense of it all…“Pull!”
Dancers in the mystic
Contemplate novelty
To heal and to be – Mystics conceive
Filled with another act of redemption
Pouring out the immense unseen Provoking light to illuminate
Doves with broken wing
Cawing black crows
Owls in the night
Inspiration.
Mysterious is the well
Mysterious is the bend
Mysterious is the Shaman
Mysterious is the pen
Mysterious are the heavens
Mysterious the hue of love
Or whatever
Feathered deep into the mystic you... “Pull!”
F***er Pull!
I like your Spirit CJ...
Three stars from me to you
And from one Shaman to another
I'm pulling the best I can
It's crazy good
It's all so crazy sane
Even with bells on my feet
Even with bells on my feet
Even with bells on my feet
Or a pen in my hand
CJ... thanks for helping me understand.
(Today, my friend told me that she was in a boat on the Ocean and this big serpent came up to her and opened his mouth wide and she looked into it and saw a big dark tunnel. I told her that was her totem... the sea serpent. I was at a lose at what to say about what her totem means because the sea serpent is so mysterious that I can hardly describe it. I just had to tell her to look deeper into it. In the end I saw that even here in the spirit of all seen there are mysteries that we shall never figure out... I then looked up at the Great Creator and thought... here we can't even figure out the sea serpent mystery and yet we try over and over to argue about the Great Creator.)
F****er pull!
And thanks!
Psychosomatic inmersion in the BodyMind of Gaia
Pasito a pasito,Todo quiere ser querido.
My friend had told me she
My friend had told me she had spirits in the house that were not good. I went and took a gather for myself with my dog, George, he's a good senser and he even got a little startled and whimpered. I said that I would return. I did and brought my rabbit bells, which I tied around my feet. The bear's claw which hangs around my neck, I brought out from under my shirt. I started dancing and began going from room to room. I told her to follow me to reclaim every room.
As we danced from room to room, opening every door and window we passed, we came upon a last door at the end of her hallway. We opened it and her thirty three year old son was sitting there and told us to get out. The room he was in was a cluttered mess and the T.V. was blaring. We left and I saw her problem. I went and took my rabbit bells off and walked back into the room and sat down.
“I said get out,” exclaimed her son.
“I’m not leaving,” I replied then continued. “This is your mother’s room. You should love your mother. I know I do.”
He arose from his chair and walked out and grabbed a beer. “Mom!” he exclaimed. Will you tell him to get out?”
I told him he sounded like he was five years old and that the spirits had a hold on the vibes in the home thru him. I also told him I was not leaving and that it was his mother’s home and when his mother came to the bedroom door, I asked her if I could remain in the bedroom. She said I could.
It was his choice to leave now but he said he didn’t have a choice to leave and went for a stun gun in his dresser. He told me to leave again and I said no, that it was his mother’s house, and she said I could stay. I kept telling him how great of a person his mother was until he couldn’t take the kindness of my words and he got off the couch and walked out the bedroom door. I followed him telling him I thought the world of his mother and he just kept walking telling me that I better shut up or I would get hurt. I didn’t let up with the kind words about his mother and it drove him outside with that bottle of Miller Lite still in his hand.
“See, it is your choice,” I said to him with a smile. “And now you can not come back in the home.”
He is a big man, over or around six feet, his weight was over two hundred twenty pounds. I knew I was in for a battle. He grabbed me and pulled me toward him. I walked into his force knocking him against the car in the driveway. When I pulled away he hit me in the face, right over my left eye, with the beer bottle but it did not shatter, and when it did not shatter he looked stunned. He reached for me again and grabbed my bear claw with a fist full of my shirt and ripped them off. He then picked me up and threw me down the hill. I landed on my shoulder but got back up. I told my friend to call the police. She didn’t but a neighbor did. My friend’s son would have had a third felony with this charge and so he took off.
When the police arrived I thought it best not to press charges, the spirits seemed gone.
It’s been two days now and my friend says that the spirits or her son haven’t returned. She seems more peaceful now and the house seems to be calm.
Today, I bought a new chain for my beer claw and when I look in the mirror I just have to smile thinking of his protection. If that bottle would have broken it would have cut my eye out. But all I have is a black eye, a small bruise on my forehead that matches the threads of the Miller Lite bottle that hit me from an angry man's hand.
Thank You, Bear, for protecting me and my friend and her son. My friend seems able to laugh again. The spirit that needed to be broken was the one that was married to her son. She seems happier and the family seems that they may be coming into healing. She has also told me that all those banging noises in the night have also left.
It was a good weekend. Today, my friend cleaned out her son's old room and fixed it to her liking... My friend seems at peace and is now looking to a better day.
A fellow mycologist!
myco-ecology
I try to create my own economics and value relationships most