YOUR FRIEND LONELINESS

I was walking above the spectacular Teign Gorge last week (see photo, along with some tree roots from Venford reservoir), when I was gripped by a feeling of loneliness. After a minute or two, I thought I don't have to accept this painful feeling uncritically. The answer isn't necessarily to be around more people, and it certainly isn't the answer to put the sticking plaster of a relationship over it.

No, it's telling me something: stay with it, disidentify. Some people happily live as hermits. I could see how accepted as it is, loneliness can corrode you, it can eventually kill you, probably along with a load of self-medication along the way.

Loneliness is a feeling of lack of connection. We have a profound need to be connected, and life can seem not worth living without it. Having others around can be a superficial way of doing this. That is why being around others can be a lonely place, if they are satisfied with a level of connection that you are not.

The real connection that loneliness asks of us is with ourselves and therefore with Spirit and the whole universe. We are the whole universe. You can imagine your spirit helpers saying why are you feeling lonely? Have you forgotten about us? We are always here around you, wanting to connect, we love you, the universe loves you. This is what you will return to when you die.

So loneliness is our friend, if we rise to her challenge. Being on our own is often the time when we can connect most deeply to Spirit.

A MYTHOLOGICAL THOUGHT-EXPERIMENT

Christianity gave us the mythology of the Garden of Eden, the Fall, Original Sin, and the world itself as a creation of the Devil. And it gave us Armageddon. Even though we may no longer ascribe to that religion, its mythology continues to live through us. The Unconscious, Spirit, the Imagination needs a mythology to live by.

You can see how it easily carries over into Shamanism. The Garden of Eden is the way indigenous people live. The Fall is how we live, modern humans who, in our alleged baseness, have destroyed the indigenous peoples. The world we have created is a bad place - just look at what we have done to the planet, and look at our terrible corrupt, self-interested governments. (Or so it is said.) It is the work of the Devil. Of course we ourselves are idealistic and conscious, it is humanity collectively that is venal and greedy, especially our corporate and political leaders, they are the worst of all, and not to be trusted. Armageddon is the climate-based extinction which (it is alleged) we face because of our own sinful natures.

I'm thinking out loud. Shamanism is life-affirming, it is about biting life to the bone and savouring it. People, life, the planet are all beautiful, soulful things. It is a rare opportunity just to have a body for a while. Shamanism can be used to build the opposite of this self-flaggellatory, pessimistic view of the world. Or it can be used to perpetuate it. I recommend the former.

Indigenous people are always giving thanks for the good things in their lives. In the modern West, we have so much that is good, and have had for many decades now. Keep giving thanks for it, instead of feeling guilty, and ignore the news. It can change that awful doom-laden cynicism about everything human and modern, that is like an epidemic nowadays. Remember the unconscious Christian mythology that is fuelling it.

I think humanity and the natural world will get through this huge transition that we are undergoing, and we will learn to live in a hi-tech but balanced way with nature.

THE MYTHOLOGICAL TASK OF OUR TIMES

I've never felt entirely comfortable with the mythology behind Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials. His idea was to complete what Milton left unfinished, as he saw it, in the failed rebellion of the rebel angels, led by Lucifer, against God. In Pullman's trilogy, the tyrannical God is indeed overthrown, but he says nothing about what replaces him. Pullman's basic message is anti-religion, end of story, as though religion has to be tyrannical because it is primitive nonsense, and whatever replaces it must be an improvement.

But if you get rid of one tyranny - or at least what you see as a tyranny - without being sufficiently thoughtful, you are liable to replace it with an even worse tyranny. That is what happened in Communist Russia and China. 

 We do not have a political tyranny in the modern West, but our scientific materialism tends to be metaphysically tyrannical. In other words, we got rid of a tyrannical God, and the replacement has been tyrannical Reason. They are/were tyrannical to the extent that they actively persecute any other perspectives. 

Lucifer was thrown out of Heaven because he rebelled. He embodied Reason. Up until then he had stood at the right hand of God, his honoured servant, but now wanted to usurp him. It tells us much about the potentially overweening nature of Reason that this occurred. It also tells us much about our times. Throwing him out was maybe not the best solution, and maybe God and Lucifer were as bad as each other in some ways. Lucifer/Satan fell for 3 days and nights when he was cast out, a striking image. 

 Pullman's solution is wrong. God - Spirit, Imagination, the Divine - needs to be reconciled with his servant Reason, rather than being defeated by him, which is just another imbalance. That is the mythological task of our times. 

At the moment, I am writing a shamanic fantasy trilogy. It is partly a how-to guide for being and working with the spirits, particularly for shapeshifting into them, embodying them, which is not generally our emphasis. But it is also about a society ruled by tyrannical Reason, in which shapeshifters are treated as mentally ill. The overarching theme - I realised today, 74000 words in - is a new reconciliation between Spirit and Reason, God and Lucifer, rather than just the overthrow of tyrannical Reason. 

Our shamanism often has the opposite imbalance: we distrust, even dismiss, reason and facts. That is a natural push-back on a collective level, but it is not very conscious. Sometimes it drives me to despair 🤣 I think we have our own reconciliation to make. 

 PS In June, myself and Emma Edgington are running a 5 day event in glorious Snowdonia on Embodying the Spirits. Here's the link.

IS THERE A WAY FORWARD?

The way forward for myself with Shamanism as a collective phenomenon isn't clear. We need to work with society, not against it, as Medicine people in any traditional society would. The basic attitude needs to be one of appreciation, from a place of strength and discernment, rather than mistrust from a place of insecurity, of not having done the shadow work. That oppositional place is often a necessary starting point, but it is very provisional, it needs to be grown out of.

Society is what it is, because we humans are what we are. It is not a threat. We have another basis within us that is Spirit, that is limitless, that is not dependent on the tragi-comedy of collective human existence. Recent events around the pandemic have showed me how deep is the oppositional attitude in the Shamanic world to our collective. I don't yet know how to approach it.

What I do know is that a necessary step, maybe even the next step, forward for many of us lies in accepting the collective for what it is, and in turn we shall become more at ease with who we are. This is a deep thing, and it is not a compromise; rather, it is about accepting part of who we are, for we are collective creatures, we belong, and that is also a metaphysical truth. It grounds us in a new way, it gives us authority and strength, it connects us. Some Shamanic teachers convey the opposite, they perpetuate this opposition, and they are not serving themselves or anyone else. You could say it comes down to shadow work.

My thoughts for some time have been on how to address this oppositional attitude, indeed can I, it is so prevalent, it has become so fundamental? I am sure that Spirit will show me. For the moment, I just need to keep writing :)

DEMENTIA MEDICINE?

I once heard a story about a Native American Medicine Woman who got dementia. She'd been well-known and respected in her time. But now she was no longer what she had been. She would sit there, vacant, saying nothing, recognising no-one. One day her daughter and a friend were sitting with her, and the friend was commiserating about what a tragedy it was. Suddenly the old lady sat bolt upright, her old self, and said brightly, "Don't worry, dear, I'm just having a different experience." And then reverted to her now familiar dementia self.

My mother had dementia for many years, and once it was obviously there, she became much easier to be with. Before that, she used to drive everyone away, myself included (she had Sun conjunct Mars in Aries.) Once she had made the early and difficult transition, she was happy in a way I had never known her to be. I once said to her, I know you can't communicate, but I think you are having a different experience which is hard for me to imagine, and you seem happy in it. At that point she tried to grab my hand, the first time there had been any kind of attempt at communication from her for a very long time. So maybe she felt recognised. Towards the end, one of the staff at the home commiserated with me about how sad it was, and it was well-meant so I didn't say anything. But I didn't agree.

What occurs to me is that sometimes when people get dementia, maybe it is a necessary corrective to how they have been. It seemed so with my mother. Maybe, for example, if you've been living for all these decades with a strongly defended idea of who you are, then eventually life bursts in as your system ages and demolishes that proud self, allowing you to return home, in a sense to who you always were. My mother announced at one point, while she still had speech, "My name's sixpence." There was an Irish trickster in her. I think she was abducted by the little people when younger - she used to hang out with them as a child - and never fully made it to this world.

MY ASTROLOGY BOOK

 Yes! I have copies of my astrology book, which is influenced by my shamanic perspective. Not available in the shops till later next year. You can purchase from me for £14.50 including p&p. 

Here is what published astrologer Joanna Watters said about it: "The astrologer's first job is to demystify. The second is to fascinate. Through his insistence on pure craft winning, at every turn, over personal feelings or bias, Barry Goddard achieves just that. An astrological page-turner."

AMERICAN INDIAN THOUGHT

Lewsi Mehl Madrona

Lewis Mehl Madrona, a Cherokee guy who is also a conventional doctor, introduced me to the concept of Two Eyed Seeing, where 'alternative' and conventional approaches live alongside each other, neither criticising the other. This is includes healthcare, and I think is particularly important to bear in mind at the moment, where one side is fiercely criticising the other. There is never a good outcome, as Lewis points out, when this happens.

Donald Fixico

Anyway, Lewis regularly interviews interesting people, and here he is with a Native American Professor, one of his heroes, who lectures on American Indian Thought. (Just scroll down a bit once you are on the link.) It is fascinating. His foundational point is that modern thought tends to be linear, whereas Indian thought is more circular, it thinks in wholes and relations. And out of that comes the idea of being in relationship to, listening to and learning from, the natural world. I'm half-way through, and I am gripped, and I thought I'd put this point down before I forgot it :)