CHAOS SHAMANISM Part 2

This is the second of the Chaos Shamanism video casts. I hadn't planned on a second but there it is, that’s Chaos Shamanism for you! Maybe there'll be more after that, I don't know.

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I wanted to talk about tradition, because Chaos Shamanism is outside of tradition, it's about being sensitive to the Spirit at all points and prioritizing that, putting that before tradition or teachings. Now that might sound like arrogance or hubris, yeah who are you to have a different opinion about the teachings around this other guy, he’s an Elder, maybe he's in his 80s, isn't that disrespectful? Who do you think you are? Well no it's not disrespectful.

I went through this one myself in my late 30s. I was part of a Buddhist set up and there was a teacher and he must have been in his 70s by then, and something in me changed. It's like I'd imbibed what he had to say, and I’d benefitted from that, but I could increasingly see the limitations of how he saw things as well, where he’d got it wrong. I started putting my own judgment in this first, and other people would try and make me doubt myself. “Oh you just haven't understood,” they would come back at me, because it's very natural for people to think well here's this guy, it's the Buddha, it's Jesus, it’s the Dalai Lama, who are you to say that they're wrong and you're right?

But it's often the limitations of the teacher that are kind of the greatest gift to you. because that's where your soul is calling out, “I don't agree with that, I don't agree,” and you say to your soul “shut up, who are you to have an opinion?”  But you you need to have that opinion, so you need to find the things you don't agree with and cherish them, they will save you!

People regularly say to me that they don't always agree with me, but they never say what it is they don't agree with, they're just saying I don't always agree with you, and I go well good, it would be dreadful if you did always agree with me, you’d be like some sort of cult member. To be fair it seems to be women who say that. The men just come out and say what it is, they are more happy to risk a debate, men are known for being more disagreeable!

So there always needs to be that gap between us and whatever tradition it is that we're inspired by, that has nourished us. Chaos Shamanism stands for that gap, if you like the soul speaking behind that gap.

So where are we in terms of tradition? This is the main point that I want to come at. Because we don't have one in the modern world. There's the remnants of Christianity and that still works for some people, there’s Islam for some people. But even then for Christianity it's not a unifying myth in the way that it used to be, because you've got a very different unifying myth  -  well it's not even unifying, the scientific myth well in a way that is unifying for a lot of people, but it lacks the sacred, it lacks spirit, so it’s not really unifying.

We haven't got one myth for the culture and we haven't got one tradition that goes back and that's not normal. But there's a freedom in that as well as a limitation, and this is where Chaos Shamanism comes in. There's a freedom in not having a tradition that you feel obliged to be part of, I mean imagine being a woman in a Muslim culture and you wanted to go your own way and not marry who you were told to marry, well that would be absolutely outrageous, you'd go through a huge amount of self-doubt, you’d need an awful lot of courage and self-belief to do that.

And it's the same in any traditional culture if you want to live outside of the way it sees the Universe, even in an indigenous culture well it wouldn’t be very easy would it? The Muslim example I used was quite extreme, but it illustrates the point, that it is very difficult to live outside the norms of your culture.

Maybe in some ways we overvalue breaking free of the norms because of our emphasis on the autonomous individual. The norms, albeit often restricting in some ways, can be very old and contain a lot of depth, apart from their function of holding the community together. That is what the term religion comes from – that which binds together.

So you don’t want to be just re-inventing old traditions without deep consideration. The elders can, slowly, they've earned the right to because they've mastered the tradition. So we do have this freedom just to follow our own spirit and where it calls us and to take from whatever speaks to us whether it's shamanic traditions  - Native American, Australian whatever it is, African, in my case astrology.

All these different things that are around that can speak to us. In a way that's the spirit of the New Age, and of course it has its own downsides as well, it can be approached superficially and that's what I want to get at here, is how do we do this? We have this freedom to follow our own spirits and to build something that really suits us, but it's not just like going shopping and picking and choosing, it's not whimsical, it's deeper than that. Maybe you decide to align yourself with a tradition, or at least dive into it for a while. I don't think fully aligning yourself with any tradition is ultimately the right thing to do, because ultimately we are outside any tradition.

Traditions are there to help our individual soul sort of unfold and find its connection to everything and its own gifts and its own meaning and all the rest of it. They are there to serve us, they are not things in themselves. But if we're part of a tradition we need to master it, and master ourselves, before we have the right to reinvent, otherwise it does get superficial.

But most importantly we need to master ourselves. I don't mean in the sense of mastery over, but we need to have been with ourselves for many years. That's the real path: being with ourselves, coming close to ourselves, and that brings us close to everything. That in a way is what any tradition is about, is bringing people close to themselves, because people have got busy lives and they tend to naturally look outwards and not inwards and to assess the values they're living from, what values they want to live from and what deeper choices they have, about who they're going be. It's like almost that's what life's about, is choosing moment by moment who you're going to be. Do you want to be the sort of person that lies, that is dissembling, that is not courageous about who you are? Well sometimes we are like that, but then we realize we've let ourselves down.

So it's that moment by moment choice, and it's just living with ourselves outside of any tradition, just living with ourselves as a human being, because we have a knowing that is inherent, we have a conscience that is inherent: something in us feels wrong if we don't tell the truth, and that isn't just brainwashing, that isn't just cultural conditioning. In a way the cultural conditioning reflects that kind of innate knowledge in us.

So we're always living from those choices about who we want to be and that is what Chaos Shamanism is. It's about always living from that, and we have this freedom, that's the great thing. So I do astrology, and I kind of I reinvent it as I go along, I do the medicine wheel, I do journeying I do all these things.

The Medicine Wheel is  a good example. I wrote a book about it in 2021.  I'd had no formal training in it, yeah no traditional training at any rate, and I reinvented it for myself. What gave me the right to do that was that I'd spent like 40 years with myself, struggling with myself, making my mistakes yeah, willing to be with my shadow stuff, not anaesthetising my demons too much, being honest with myself. Enough of the time, at any rate. Of course I've made mistakes, but that that was my main qualification to write that book.

Now some people would say it's cultural appropriation, you've got no right to do that, it's a foreign culture, and a minority oppressed one at that, you are stealing what little they have left. Well some would say that, others would not. It's not like this blanket statement saying that is cultural appropriation. Some Native Americans would say that, or Indians as they call themselves, yeah, and some wouldn't say that. Some would say go for it, you need to run with this thing, these teachings are valuable so run with them and make them relevant to your land.  

So this is how Chaos Shamanism works: you stay with yourself, you learn about yourself, learn how to be over probably decades, and then that gives you the right to run ceremonies, to teach. You have something to say and the right to reinvent as you go along. There's your empowerment: you don't get initiations or empowerments from outside yourself, you get them from within by staying with yourself, staying at that coalface of who you are, warts and all, and there is joy in that as well as difficulty. It is more difficult than worldly achievement, but not so obvious. It’s a slow path, Okay bye for now.