ARE MEDICINE PEOPLE CONSERVATIVES?

I've never got the impression when reading about indigenous peoples that the 'spirit' guys lived in a state of opposition to, or alienation from, the traditions of their people, or were generally suspicious of their political leaders. Rather, it seems to me that they were/are seamlessly a part of the establishment, and generally supportive of it.

Our modern shamanism, by contrast, is part of the counter-culture that arose in the 60s in opposition to the establishment. You can see why that counter-culture needed to happen. But eventually you have to make your peace with convention, or you're no bloody use to it. The state of opposition (which is understandable when we're starting out) becomes a prolonged adolescence, an institutionalised spiritual bypass. 

 

There is a regular event called 'Breaking Convention' that occurs in the UK. I am sure it does some very good stuff. But many of us have spent half our lives 'breaking convention'. Eventually it goes nowhere. It is not interesting. What does go somewhere is making your peace with it, not fearing you will lose your magic and radicalness if you conform. That is a necessary, and much more difficult, thing to do. Try it one day a week :)

It's a journey I've been on myself. I found when I honestly analysed my attitudes to authority and to government and to politicians, that my responses were often self-serving and ill-thought through. And gave me a group identity, it made me one of the 'good guys'. Now I live with being thought naive by some, but that's OK 😂 The oppositional attitude goes deep in our culture, it becomes a part of who we are, and it can seem like reality. But it ain't.

JOURNEYING TALES

Seem to have started meeting with some friends to do journeying. A couple of weeks ago we did soul retrievals for each other, and then today checked in how that had unfolded. It's been a while since I've done much of this work, but it seems to be time. When I was working, my body was possessed by the spirit helper, and I was vocalising intensely - that itself is part of the energy work, and the person afterwards said they felt something quite ancient and raw was working through me. It seemed to do the job, something underlying was catalysed for the person over the last 2 weeks :)

For myself, there is a way I become out of sorts and feeling bleak and uncared for in the evenings, and I reach for the red wine to comfort myself. Work was done on that. The outcome was that it had got worse by a few days ago. And I just had to sit with it. I got the 4 of Swords when I pulled a Tarot Card, pointing me inwards. And I recalled the 'sky-like' attitude to difficult mental states from my Buddhist days: eventually they pass. And it did. Late Friday night I remembered my animal helper, and immediately I felt comforted. When I'm in a bleak state, it is because I feel disconnected, and so I forget the spirit help that is always there, and it does help. I recommend it, that is what these helpers are for.

Saturday morning and the storm had passed. I was still feeling fragile in the aftermath, but something had shifted. That was how the soul retrieval worked for me: it made things worse before they got better. So Saturday night I bought wine to celebrate rather than commiserate, and a pizza on which I put loads of chorizo and chilli, and watched 3 episodes of Vikings. Now that is what I call a party. I had earned it through sticking with all that shit, which has been going on for months now. Childhood stuff.

So today we were just hanging out with our animal helpers. As I said, you may want to travel a long way to the Lower World to meet them, but when you've had helpers for years, often they are just there, you don't need to go anywhere. Those 3 worlds are just a useful structure to get you going. Even the Otherworld is just a structure, this world and the Otherworld, indeed life and death, are for the Shaman the same place. As William Blake said, death is just like moving from one room to another, and he was looking forward to it.

The other 2 did their journeys lying down. I was on my bison hide crawling around, and pretty soon I realised I was embodying a crocodile, which was a first. The animal can do so much more, can get into you so much more, when you let them embody you. You get a felt physical sense of the animal. I thought I'm NOT going to look Crocodile up in a book, this has to be purely my own sense of it: that is how these things work if you want to do it deeply. It has to be your own.

 

 

The Crocodile has a skin as tough as you like, and nothing to fear. He is also a very ancient species, and has the knowing about life that comes with age, especially this big mother that I was embodying. And that is something for my anxiety and the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. Don't let any of it bother me, let it just bounce off me. And sit there patiently and watch, like the Crocodile does for its prey.

I am not on a career trajectory that requires plans and busyness. I am on the slow path of working for Spirit, where a lot of deep work can be done in a short time, you can have a lasting impact in just a few short years, look at Jesus. So there is no hurry. Just wait, do nothing for what may seem an interminable time (and my life has often felt like that) and then bam out it comes, do a bit of work and watch the ripples, remember the ripples that you won't know about. Just who we are can have a tremendous effect. So this Crocodile turned up today just after I'd had all this shit to go through, giving me a new toughness and a shifted perspective.

I've had the Journeying thing on my mind for some years, not quite sure when and how. I learnt all the 'core' stuff in the 90s, but I have always felt compelled to go away and not do much with it until I'd really made my own deep original connection with it, and to do that I needed a deeper connection with myself first, and that has taken 20 years. So Spirit will show me the way in with this. It's fantastic work.

BELIEFS

Here's something on the Mind, the North of the Medicine Wheel, a place that the counter-culture is wary of. It's gut instinct that we trust, not the head. But that's just a reaction to the one-sidedness of the mainstream culture. It's just as imbalanced.

The mind is a wonderful thing, for it can help reveal whether our gut instinct is genuine intuition, or prejudice, or maybe a mixture of both. The great strength of the mind is its ability to be detached, its lack of personal investment, so that it can weigh things up. This is something most of us find very hard, which is why you find it in the North, the place of the Elder. It is something that takes most of our lives to be able to do.

What matters is not what we think, but how attached we are to our ideas. What matters is not whether you think 2+2=4, but whether you can live with other people not agreeing with you about it. In this case, you know they're wrong, but can you leave them with that? It is something I struggle with. It is a good learning for me.

The chances are that the people who say that 2+2 is something other than 4 will be very attached to 5, or whatever they think the answer is. Reason isn't going to make any difference. As William Blake said, "A man convinced against his will, is of the same opinon still." The last couple of Covid years have seen an intensification of strongly held collective opinions about what is 'really' going on in the public sphere. As if there can be that kind of certainty.

 

 

This rigidity - which is emotionally-based - results in no-go areas with friends. This is something I also find difficult. Once you've known someone for a while, you may well find there are subjects that you can't go near with them. It is too loaded. It is a limitation on the friendship. But it also seems quite normal. An example might be someone who was a QAnon follower, convinced that the US election was stolen. You would end up in a fight if you pushed it, because that belief is part of who they are. They would have all sorts of self-serving 'evidence' that it was in fact stolen.

Beliefs. We all have them. It takes courage to examine them disinterestedly. It is the capacity to do that that matters, rather than what you may end up thinking as a result. Strongly held opinions are a barrier to thinking. They set who we are in stone, and of course the whole idea of this Shamanic thing is to be able to stand out of the way so Spirit can do its thing, or so I'm told :)

SHAMANIC JOURNEYING CIRCLE EXETER

I'll be holding a group on the 3rd Tues of the month, beginning 16th November. 7.30pm. Exeter Natural Health Centre (83 Queen St, next to Boston Tea Party). No experience needed. No need to book. Bring blindfold, and drum or rattle if you have one. Money: by donation. Future dates (so far): 14th Dec, 18th Jan, 15th Feb.

 

 

My CV: I've been doing Shamanic things for 25 years, and Buddhist things for 16 years before that. I have books on The Medicine Wheel and on Astrology coming out next year. I also do individual astrology and shamanic healing sessions. Picture © Ali Broughton (the cover of my Medicine Wheel book.)

APOCALYPSE NEVER

Just been watching this critique of the apocalyptic environmental narrative, which depresses many people, and which is not based on rational considerations. I particularly liked the analysis of the psychology behind this narrative - its religious element, and the way it often forms an unholy alliance with people who are anti- the system, and prone to seeing the world in terms of victims and oppressors. Extinction Rebellion is cited as an example.

 

The rational solutions are often the opposite of what we think: You want to stop the land being degraded? Then draw the subsistence farmers into work in the cities, which is what they'd prefer anyway.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aLxZF_EWaLE

 

 

TEACHER PSYCHOLOGY

This is the point I am leading up to: if there are things in ourself we don't want to get close to, our relationships with pupils will tend to reinforce that.

 

I don't always recognise it when people are seeing me as someone they can learn from. It's not just English modesty - a much over-rated, and sometimes hypocritical, virtue - but also an unwillingness just to stand up straight and say to myself this is who you are, you've been round this block enough times: if you haven't got something to say, then who has? 

 

It's not just to do with having been around the block. It's also something I came here with, that has always been natural to me, and yes I've had to stand back for years at certain points to round it out and clear some s%$t out the way, but it would be false of me not to own that. So my first point is if you've got it, own it, it is not a virtue to deny it. You will see it in people's responses to you.

 

Coming out of that is my second point. People will love you and they will give some of their own power to you. This is a natural thing: most of us are not fully living our own connection to Spirit - the East of the Medicine Wheel. They may raise you up beyond where you are yourself. Never mind. Projection is usually a necessary thing, to some extent. First we see it out there, or we imagine we do, and then we claim it for ourselves. The pedestal is something we have to learn to handle, and to honour it, for we are holding something precious for the other person till they are ready to embody it themselves. It's a delicate thing. Often people's way to their own power is the painful one of betrayal by the teacher. But it doesn't have to be like that, not if the teacher has been around the block enough times and learnt from that.

 

And what I'm referring to is the teacher's shadow work. The places we are needy, or concealed from ourselves. It has perhaps been the place I have learnt most from myself: giving others my East, then having that betrayed. It is a valid path, albeit rather protracted and painful. To some extent, it is inevitable, for no teacher is perfect, we are all human.

 

There is this gross level, where the teacher really should be back in his or her cave for a decade, sorting their stuff. The teacher who needs everyone to think like they do, and if they don't, tells the pupils they are 'confused'. The one who creates a love-fest centred around them at the end of the workshop, because they need to be loved. The one who has their issues with authority, and draws the pupils into their own conspiracy views of how the world works. You can often tell when there is something funny going on, because the people around the teacher will tend to reflect the imbalance or woundedness of the teacher.

Then there is the more subtle level, which is where I really wanted to get to. The people who come to your workshops aren't going to challenge you in an intimate kind of way. Challenge is the wrong word. It's softer than that. It's more like they won't relate to you like a good friend will. It's an energetic thing as much as anything. They won't move in on you personally, they will hold you at a respectful distance. By and large. You are the teacher. I'm not quite sure how to put this. I know. They are not going to come near the stuff in yourself you want to keep a distance from, whereas a friend may do, if you're lucky. Or a family member, that's what they're for

 

The astrologer Liz Greene talks in her Mythic Tarot book about the psychotherapist as someone who can protect their own woundedness by creating relationships in which they always have the power. I think this is really what I am getting at. When you have pupils, there is usually a relationship based around you carrying the East, and initiating them into it. That is a powerful thing, and it creates a powerful relationship. But it also hides you from the things in yourself that you aren't very comfortable with, or are unconscious of. There is an unspoken agreement not to go there. And this is what we need to watch out for, even if we have done a considerable amount of our own shadow work. 

 

Put it this way: if there are things in ourself we don't want to get close to, our relationship with pupils will tend to reinforce that. So we also need people we don't have that kind of relationship with.

 

BE TRUE TO THE UNIVERSE

If there is any way that you are not being true to who you are in your life, do not overlook it for the sake of not causing trouble for yourself or others. It matters, and it will eventually bite you, hard (if you are fortunate.) It cannot be smoothed over or wished away. You may get seriously ill if you try to skirt around it. It is where the cutting edge of your soul lies. It can take courage, it can take those close to you thinking you have lost it. It can take a lot of trust in the bigger design of things, and that you are being taken care of.

 

 

It is not just ourselves we need to be true to, more accurately it is the whole universe we need to be true to, because that is what we really are - the whole universe. It is about being true to the Great Spirit that runs through everything. That is what we are here to do

THE RAW, VISCERAL ANIMAL SPIRITS

There is a raw, primal place this journeying thing can go to. It may take a while, especially with our 1000-year background in the relegation of the body - it used to be Spirit-Body, now it is Mind-Body. The 'client' (from the Latin, 'someone who heeds', I can go with that) may not be ready for that primal interaction, or even need that. But, and this could be an indictment, nor may the 'practitioner' be ready for that.

What a word, 'shamanic practitioner', as if this thing is some kind of practice. It is real, it is raw, it is not a 'profession'. 'Health and Safety' would do well to steer a wide berth. You may vomit, you may speak in tongues or be uninhibitedly animal, a bison bellowing or a big cat roaring; you will not have control of your body, and you will certainly have surrendered beyond that which is acceptable and 'civilised'. This is the territory where the spirits come into their own. And the healing work you do will be real. You won't have words for the main part of it. 

 

This is the healing territory I have wandered in for a long time, not sure what to do with it. Well, I thought I did to start with, many years ago. And it worked, for a while. But it was the in-the-door-out-the-door method. I now know it involves a lengthier process than we are maybe accustomed to, like God forbid actually getting to know the person over time and letting some Spirit sense of what is needed settle. I also know I need to physically move like some primeval presence, or it needs to move me; just having a chat with some being in the lower or upper worlds won't fully cut it, much as I respect those worlds.

Maybe that is all I have to say for now. But it is something I want to explore with others. I'm just not quite sure when or how. It's probably tied in with getting my realm back before too long (I hope), after a 4 year absence, my 5 bed house with barns and 27 acres on Dartmoor. A place where we can fully shapeshift into our animal souls and roam free across the moor. Moving back there will be an archetypal event, all sorts of things I cannot now foresee will become possible.