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.

CHAOS SHAMANISM - the Written Version!

OK, so I know a load of you aren't so keen on the short videos I've been making. You'd rather scan a written piece and move on. Fair enough. That's how social media works. With that in mind I have lightly edited the transcript (provided by youtube) of my 1st talk on Chaos Shamanism. It took a while, but I'll do Part 2 as well if you like this one 😎 Below is a painting by Jackson Pollock. Maybe he can be a patron saint of Chaos Shamanism?

I'm going to talk around an idea I've had for what I call Chaos Shamanism. I've looked it up on the net, there don't seem to be many references to it, so I can probably pinch it for my own!

I came up with it about a week ago because I almost had like this visionary moment in some Fairy Woods in a Doncaster. I started talking about teaching Shamanism - like offline, in person - I don't know what the term is for it these days. I don't currently do that, but I know I'd be good at it. I just don't quite know where to start. But I just started talking, and it just all came out, and I was just feeling so deeply about it, I was weeping as I talked.

It's like there's something bubbling up within me, something strong to say and I'd love to do it. but I'm not in a hurry. I'm hungry, yes, but I don't think I have much to prove: I'm old enough to have had most of that knocked out of me! Besides which I wrote a few books a few years ago and I found a publisher and so that's sort of taken care of: “Okay, you've done something now!”

So, Chaos Shamanism. I came up with the idea because I thought what would I teach, what type of shamanism would it be? Well, it wouldn't be any particular kind of school or tradition, and the reason for that is you see in spiritual traditions the sort of breakaway attempt to return to the source when it becomes religion. Because that's what people do: they turn it into religion, they turn it into a set of forms which they bow down and worship, a teacher that they bow down and worship. And they think that's the thing, and aligning themselves with that is what will make them holy or whatever it is they are trying to become – enlightened, spiritual, maybe just better than other people! All of those things.

But it's not about aligning yourself with a tradition, it's about aligning yourself with your own guidance, that which comes from within you. That is what people find very difficult, but that is what a good teacher does. A good teacher doesn't go, “Follow what I say, understand what I say, because I have thought it through much more deeply than you ever could.” Well, he may have done but that's not the point, which is don't align yourself with a tradition, but benefit from a tradition, be inspired by it, appreciate its depths.

Of course, all teachers will SAY don’t follow me, follow your own wisdom. And you have to work out how much they mean that by what the people around them are like, and by what you are like around the teacher. Do you lose something?

Traditions may be thousands of years old and they carry egregore with them, the energy that builds up over time around ceremonies etc, and that is powerful. That egregore is a gift from the ancestors! So we need to respect traditions, but not be beholden to them. At the end of the day you always have to step back: it's about you and your own soul, and if you are shamanic your soul is the natural world, you and the natural world are the same, we belong to the natural world.

The natural world is alive, it's inspirited, and that is the foundation of shamanism, because that is the foundation of how indigenous people are in the world. It's not even an idea for them; for us that has to be an idea, but for them it's like it's the air they breathe. “Well of course it's alive, of course we're part of the natural world, what crazy person are you that you could think otherwise?”

Well we are those crazy people, we have this dead universe. Christianity fell apart and gave rise to a dead universe. Why did that happen? Well maybe because it had an image of torture at the middle of it: the crucifix. However profound its teachings might be in certain ways, it is also an image of torture bang at the centre of people's mythology of how they see the universe, with this threat of eternal hellfire too. So now we have a dead universe. It's almost like we're in cultural trauma from what the crucifix did to us, it created despair and a dead universe yeah and we haven't woken up yet, we are still numb.

Of course the universe is alive, we're alive, everything's alive, rocks are alive, you can feel their presence: these big rocks you want to talk to them you want to love them. I live on Dartmoor, I see that a lot.

So this is what Shamanism has to offer the modern world: a remedy for this great forgetting that the world is alive and it's inspirited and it takes care of us and it's beautiful, and we don't put the spirit somewhere else up there in heaven: it is here.

Nature worship, that's what it's about. I don't know if you watch Jordan Peterson on youtube, I’d recommend him, but I have an issue with him, he tries to put down how we feel about the natural world as Baal, worshipped with a Golden Calf in the Old Testament, and condemned by God. Mere nature worship, he thinks of it. Well no you're wrong Mr Peterson, nature contains everything, we contain everything we contain the whole universe.

So Chaos Shamanism. Chaos, that's an interesting word because we think of it as mere disorder. Well yes, it it's not order, but neither is it disorder or disarray, which is what it came to mean. It's the ancient Greek word, it refers to the vast abyss of Unknowing, the Great Mystery out of which everything arose, yeah what came before the Big Bang is the Great Mystery, Chaos is about that. So it's great Mystery Shamanism.

We think because we can't order things in human terms then that is a negative, it's disorder, it's disarray. Well that's just the limited rational mind. Chaos Shamanism is Great Mystery Shamanism, and it's out of the Great Mystery flowing through us, because we are it, that we have our own inner guidance.

You see this kind of return to that kind of source in other religions. You see it in Buddhism, they have sunyata, which is emptiness, which is a bit like chaos. It's the great void, the Great Mystery. So then people turn sunyata into a thing, so you have to go no no, emptiness is itself empty. All right, so you then have a two types of sunyata, and they have to keep doing that because people turn it into a thing. So it's a continual process of rebelling against people's tendency to turn ideas or practices into absolutes, taking them literally, writing them in stone. And then they tell other people they're not being respectful because they didn't hold the pipe in the right way, or they didn't give thanks in the right way, that's disrespectful to the pipe. Well I'm not saying no to that, I do respect tradition, but actually it's the spirit that matters.

There’s a good story from Tibetan Buddhism about someone who was reciting the mantra of Avalokitesvara, the Bodhisattva of Compassion, and he recited it Om Mani Padme Ox for years, and it worked, it changed him. But he’d got it wrong, it should have been Om Mani Padme Hum. But it still worked because he was doing it with the right intention. So you see the point.

In medieval Christianity they had dancing in the churches, and they stopped that, because when you dance you make your own connection with the spirit, and you can’t have that if you’re trying to run a religion. So with that in mind, maybe that is what the Sufi dancing is about, a return to a direct connection with the spirit within a formalised religion.

So that's what we need to do with Shamanism continually, because you see it happening you see it turning into religion left right and centre all over the place, not because anything's going wrong, but because that's what people do. They think there really is a lower world and a middle world and an upper world and that power animals live in the lower world and spirit guides live in the upper world and the middle world's where you go to find your lost keys. OK, there's a certain amount of truth in that, but really it's just Spirit working through you, it has no name or form. So if you just feel that working through you, it's not that you haven't got there yet because you don't know what your power animal is yeah and that you're backward, actually it's probably that you're forward, you don't need those intermediaries. I mean I love my animals, don't get me wrong, I love all of that, but they are intermediaries, it's the warmth of the Great Spirit comes through them, their physical presence, the physical presence of power animals, of animal helpers reminds us of the physicality of Spirit yeah.

“You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves,” that's what Mary Oliver the poet said. You don’t have to be good, you don't have to repent, she said, you only need to do that and then you have your source of guidance and joy.

Moment by moment. Chaos Shamanism is about listening to the spirit and listening to that inner guidance or outer guidance, it's kind of both yeah, but listening to that guidance moment by moment and living from that, putting that first, putting your guidance before tradition, respecting tradition, but that inner guidance needs to feel comfortable around the tradition, and there may be bits that don't feel comfortable, so don't think there's something wrong with you yeah, trust that inner guidance, trust the bits that feel right and discard the bits that don't and a good teacher will always guide you towards that.

Chaos Shamanism: inspired by tradition but not beholden to it, and listening to Spirit at all times.

CHAOS SHAMANISM

Perhaps the reason the universe is widely seen as inanimate, as dead, is because we are still collectively traumatised by the gruesomeness of the crucifix as the centrepiece of our old mythology. 

 

Shamanism, the reclaiming of indigeneity, of how people were in the world before big-time religion took over, is a remedy for that trauma.

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MORALITY vs PSYCHOLOGY

'Spiritual bypass' is better described as the sin of pride, in that we have awarded ourselves a spiritual status; and the sin of dishonesty, in that we are not owning the evil in our own hearts.

Good old-fashioned morality has a lot going for it. It doesn't care what happened to you in your childhood, or about diagnosing you with exculpatory psychological syndromes. It says here is what you are doing wrong in the eyes of the Great Spirit, which is also the voice of your conscience: change it, or you will continue to suffer, and to be out of balance with yourself and with the world.

 

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And a 10 minute video on what I am calling Chaos Shamanism: Inspired by tradition, but not beholden to it. Listening to your own guidance at every step.

 

A CREATION MYTH: THE RETURN OF THE GIANTS

Here is a story that runs counter to the current human narrative. Life is abundant by nature, and is always unfolding into new forms, guided by the care and imagination of Mother Earth. The plants were the first to cover the earth in their abundance. The animals, a different kind of life, were enabled to prosper by the plants. It was the time of the giants, both plant and animal.

But as the plants flourished, they used up their food, carbon dioxide, storing it in their bodies as they died and rested underground.

 

Humans arrived when CO2 had reached a record low: much lower and plant life itself would have been threatened. Plants by this time existed in nowhere near the abundance of their glory days, and most of the giants were long gone. Humans quickly spread over the earth, and in the blink of an eye by geological time, began to use the buried plants for their own prosperity. Insodoing they also began to give food back to the plants, which responded with the great re-greening of the earth that we are starting to see. Already an area 1.4 times the size of the USA has re-greened.

 

It is early days yet. CO2 is at 400ppm, while the historical norm is several thousand ppm. Temperature is also at a historic low, and that too is currently recovering, though for reasons that are less clear. It is a wonderful win-win, as human prospering spawns a wider natural prospering.

 

The purposes of what we call Evolution are mysterious. But did Mother Earth have a hand in creating humans partly to help her first children, the plants, prosper again?

 

Humans are a tropical species. We eventually die of exposure unclothed in temperatures as high as 60 F. The warming of the earth and its increasing abundance reminds us of who we once were, that we have maybe forgotten.

 

Humans are contrary, easily thrown out of alignment with the natural world. A large part of the species currently sees the good they are doing to nature as a bad thing. But that is to be expected from this species, the new-born ones who do not yet know who they are, or their part in the bigger scheme of things. Will they gain more sense over time? It is Mother's Earth's hope.

ON NOT BEING ABOVE THE WORLD

I've seen this in Buddhism, in Christianity and in Shamanism: a teacher claiming that the world is in a hell of a state, even (gleeful hand-rubbing) in crisis, and he or she stands for a new vision, rooted (in the case of Shamanism) in indigenous values.

It can be very alluring. It's a story as old as the hills. It makes you one of the good guys, it gives you belonging and it gives you purpose. It tells you who you are. It is hard to see through, until the teacher has too many one-night stands with the pupils.

But even after you've had your own crisis and left the teacher, you're probably still left feeling like you're one of the good guys in an unspiritual world. That one goes deep. It is foundational to the 'counter-culture' in which most of us here swim to some degree.

But it is a false identity. I'm sure I could do no better a job of running the world than those appointed to do so. It is fiendishly complex, with a down side to every decision.

The self-serving complacency of the counter-culture. That is one way of putting what I am railing against. No, your simple solutions for the world are not a product of your good-heartedness and insight, just naivety and a wish to be above the fray. The 'us against them' thing goes very deep. Anti-capitalist, anti-Tory, anti conventional medicine and conventional farming, anti the pharmaceutical and oil industries ..... the list goes on. It is self-serving and it is hokum.

Let us be with the world, like a good therapist would be with, rather than opposing, their client. See what it is that people are trying to achieve, and assume that people in positions of influence are there because they are competent and acting in good faith. Taking successful people down is not insight, it is envy.

When we look at the world from its point of view, with a consideration for facts, then we look with compassion, and we can be of real help. And it also opens our eyes to the real bad actors, instead of the imaginary ones. Some of whom may be very close to home, in spiritual guise.

 

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Dr Patrick Moore was one of the founders of Greenpeace. He left in the 80s when the anti-capitalists and anti-humanists took over. He is a scientist, and here he argues against the nonsense of the climate 'crisis' and the lies surrounding it. He argues that higher CO2 is good for the natural world, judging by the past, and that it only plays a small part in global warming, which is itself also a good thing. CO2 is at a historic low, and humans are saving the planet by burning fossil fuels! Here he is in a recent interview.

 

                

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In my happy place yesterday, high up on Dartmoor in the sunshine after a month of rain. 

The view over Burrator reservoir from Down Tor. 

 

Then the stone circle and stone rows I had not visited before. Half an hour curled up on the ground in the second circle, no-one else in sight. 

 

Finally, on the way back, a surprise fairy path, with cut roses at a small tor, and a gateway through thorn trees further down. And right at the end, a phone call from my son in London, ringing for no reason. He's never done that before, he wouldn't know how cheering it was for me.

TRANSGENDER: A SHAMANIC PERSPECTIVE

Shamanism begins with a remembering that we belong to the natural world. We are part of her, and she takes care of us. We learn to trust her. And for the same reason, we trust the body we are born into, whether it is male or female. It is not the wrong body! This is very basic.

But what happens if you experience the other gender within yourself? Again, TRUST IT! You have an interesting journey to undergo. You are both genders, you are gifted, you bring a perspective to life that others do not have. If your people are civilised, they will look to you. If they are uncivilised, they will taunt you for being different.

You may look just the same as everyone else. Or you may be a man living as a woman, or vice-versa. Many people do not like difference. They want to know what is what, and they fear the unknown. You will need to let their arrows bounce off you, and not take it personally. This is a warrior training that forges character, for few people have the strength to live outside herd approval.

Your dual nature is a gift from Spirit. When you present as the other gender, there is a ceremonial element to it, an archetypal power that passes through you. You may want to do it all the time, or just when the call to do so is there.

Gender is real and distinct for the great majority of people, and it tells them who they are. It is a partial identity, but it is the identity they need to live. To say that gender is just a social construct is to deny a very basic and ancient fact of existence. It is harmful to push this at people. If you grew up on a farm like I did, you will know that a lot of our gender-associated behaviour is biologically, not socially, determined.

Basic as the distinction is between male and female, it is also fluid. In achieving a deeper balance during the course of our lifetimes, we may feel we have become both genders, or neither. This is what Jan Morris, one of the earliest men to have transgender surgery, said in his eighties.

We live in a literalising culture that does not understand Ceremony and Spirit. When people opt for surgery and start to insist they are the other gender and that others must recognise them as such, they are literalising a god or goddess that is working through them; they are trying to become it, and in doing so they turn a gift into a curse. It is a tragedy.

What is also a tragedy is young people joining a bandwagon, thinking that changing gender will solve their problems, and adults colluding in this and offering irreversible chemical and surgical mutilation. The stories of castrated or breastless young people who are now 'detransitioning' are heartbreaking. Their accounts are difficult to listen to. For most of them, the research shows that the real issue is that they are gay, and they need time to realise this.

Identity is not such a big deal. It is ultimately illusory, even though ordinary humanity needs it for psychological well-being. Humans are relational as much as they are autonomous, and who we are is a product of a negotiation with the outside world. This is something we learn in the school playground. You can't insist on how people see you. It is natural and part of their development for a 2 year-old to insist that really they are a princess or a superhero, and adults play along with it. But for an adult male to insist they are 'really' a woman is delusional and infantile. It is fuelled by a medical lie that we can physically change gender. We cannot. There is only ersatz and mutilation. There is money to be made from this lie, doctors know it is a lie, and hopefully there will eventually be an accounting and a reckoning for this malpractice.

If you are at ease with who you are, you do not need to insist on how others see you. Nor do you need to go on marches about it, displaying it in public. You quietly get on with who you are. The sacred is degraded when it is turned into a political campaign.

Many people such as artists will have both genders working through them. Both are needed, to some degree, in order to be creative. They may not feel the need to present as other than the gender they were born into.

There is a natural process whereby we encounter the other gender within during the second half of life: this is Jung's Anima and Animus. Men become better able to listen to themselves and to others, listen with their feelings; and women become better able to know what they want, and not feel so obliged to please others and to take care of them.

So here's to masculine women and feminine men, and the riches they bring. My perspective is indebted to the Native American Two-Spirit tradition, which is worth looking up on Youtube.

 

And, something for everyone, 

 

here is the 10 min youtube version of this post. You can find my youtube channel, full of 10 min videos here.

LOVE AND DEATH

When we die, we become what we always were: everything. That is why Taliesin, the original Celtic Shaman, sang:

"I have been a speckled snake on the hill, I have been a viper in Llyn. I have been a bill-hook crooked that cuts..."

 

Nancy Wood was an American poet who spent many years living alongside the Indians on the Pueblo, absorbing their ways of seeing the world. Her poetry is inspired by the Pueblo. You could say this is a metaphysical love poem:

 

A long time I have lived with you

And now we must be going

Separately to be together.

Perhaps I shall be the wind

To blur your smooth waters

So that you do not see your face too much.

Perhaps I shall be the star

To guide your uncertain wings

So that you have direction in the night.

Perhaps I shall be the fire

To separate your thoughts

So that you do not give up.

Perhaps I shall be the rain

To open up the earth

So that your seed may fall.

Perhaps I shall be the snow

To let your blossoms sleep

So that you may bloom in spring.

Perhaps I shall be the stream

To play a song on the rock

So that you are not alone.

Perhaps I shall be a new mountain

So that you always have a home.