SHAMANISM, EVOLUTION and the GREAT CHAIN OF BEING

In a recent Facebook post, I was suggesting that Evolution as a purely scientific phenomenon is not compatible with a worldview that sees life as having sacred origins. Which includes shamanic cultures, and probably every society that has ever existed. Except our one!

I think there is also a mythological problem with Evolution. Evolution as a myth is an inversion of the medieval myth of the Great Chain of Being, which saw God at the top, then down through the angels, fallen angels, humans, animals, plants and minerals. Humans were unique in being composed of both spirit and matter (which is seen as inanimate).

So right away in medieval times we have the problem of humans looking down on the rest of creation. From a shamanic point of view, everything has consciousness, including matter. And humans are not 'better' than other life forms. In fact, humans are known in Native American cultures as the 'new-born ones', because they are the only animal that does not know who it is! Other life forms - and rocks etc - are seen as having their own experience and viewpoint, that we can learn from.

Then we come to modern times, and we flip the Great Chain of Being over, so that instead of going from God downwards, we go from 'inert' matter upwards until, at the top, at the pinnacle of life, we find humans. This Evolutionary model flatters our self-importance even more. I would argue it represents in some ways a degeneration of the medieval model, because it has done away with the sacred origins of life and it has left us, idiots that we are, with not even God to look up to.

The Evolutionary model doesn't have to flatter our self importance. It easily does the opposite. Take the fact that we share 50% of our genes  with bananas! This is quite profound. Evolution has always, in a sense, brought us closer to the natural world in this way. And for many of us, I am sure it does. 

But how many of us? Only the other day, I saw a physics professor arguing that 'of course' humans are superior to animals. In the same way, quantum physics is over 100 years old. It shows that reality is at bottom non-rational and deeply intertwined with the observer. It says, according to more than one professor, that consciousness is primary, materiality secondary. But how much of this subtle world view has filtered through to the mainstream? Like the medieval church, science deals in simple certainties, and the more subtle view is for the minority, the 'heretics'! Collectively we are addicted to simple certainties and self-importance.

I think it is important that we can critique the idea of Evolution. It can be difficult to do so, because it has acquired the status of absolute truth in our society, to the extent that people can react by thinking you are some kind of anti-science fundamentalist (I speak from experience!) if you do question it.

We have lived with absolute truths for 1000 years now, firstly with Medieval Christianity, and now with Science. Of course, neither of them are fundamentalist in their essential nature. But fundamentalism - the idea that there is only one story in town - is a way of controlling large societies (and of controlling ourselves) through dealing in simple certainties. And on a popular level, Science does that no less than the Medieval Church did.

If I hope to achieve anything with this piece, it is this: the ability to see Evolution as one Creation Myth among many, that does not belong to a special category called 'fact', while the rest are mere stories. If anything, I would want to place Evolution as a Myth in special measures, until it can find a way of re-incorporating the sacred origins of life, and do something about humanity's self-important place in its scheme.

--------------------

I offer skype/FB video astrology readings, by donation. Contact: BWGoddard1 (at)aol.co.uk

---------------------

NB Please note the Free Email Subscribe button, top right of the page 😼

Why the Universe isn't Gradually Unravelling

I was watching a BBC programme about entropy, the idea that the universe gets more disordered over time. As one scientist put it, in non-technical language it means things are getting worse. And I thought what a strange way of looking at the world.

I learned about entropy at school, but it wasn’t until more recently that I felt able to question accepted scientific theories. They are so battened down by proofs and equations and authority that it doesn’t seem like one can question them. This is probably the biggest fundamentalism of our age, every bit as rigid as the Islamists or Christians can get. And of course, if you are in it, you can’t see it.

The guy who came up with entropy, Ludwig Boltzmann, suffered from depression and eventually killed himself. I wonder if there is a connection. And what kind of culture is it that thinks things can only get worse? The eventual fate of the universe, according to this kind of thinking, is ‘Heat Death’, a vast cold empty nothingness.

My experience is NOT that things unravel over time. Our particular culture is making things worse, but that is particular to us. Just look at life, in its abundance and beauty and complexity. It has been there a long time. We are the babes of creation, the ones who do not know who they are and are making a mess. But our elder brothers and sisters, all the animals and plants – they don’t make things worse, they don’t make things gradually unravel, because they know how to live. They know about balance.

So, here is a big question: my experience is that the world does not unravel over time. But accepted scientific theory says it does. Which should I go with, and do I even have the right to think in this sort of way? And almost as a matter of principle I say we need to go with our experience, because if we can’t do that, then what do we have? It is part of the disempowerment, the brainwashing of our complex culture, that needs people to be productive and to conform, that we have learned not to trust our own experience anymore.

Another example is the Sun going around the Earth. That is something we experience every day, it is a basic part of being human to see this happening. And yet we are told it is not so, that it is the other way round, and we believe that, because we are told it. This, in my view, is degenerate, we have lost our power as humans. Humans that have that power are seen as ‘primitive’.

And the other big question is what kind of culture sees things as inevitably getting worse?

According to Buddhism, everything is Mind. Not mind in a narrow sense, more in the sense of the primordial imagination (in astrology, Neptune) that throws up the world around us. The world is produced by the imagination, life imagines the world into being, and it is real, but not ‘objective’ in the way that science would have us believe. Nor is it a solipsistic fantasy. It is something else, ineffable, that takes a lifetime of contemplating.

So the world is a product of the imagination, and that is what keeps it buoyant and creative, it has that force of life behind it. That is why, left to its own devices, the world does not unravel.

But we have become unmoored from that imaginative link to creation. We think the world is material and separate from us: that is a basic assumption behind the scientific method. So the world around us is no longer being maintained by the forces of our imagination, it has been unmoored, and that is why it is gradually falling apart over time. Hence the theory of entropy.

‘Primitive’ cultures understand this link. That is why, some, for example, participate in the rising of the sun every day, in the belief that if they ceased to do so, the sun would cease to rise. We are a literal-minded culture, and think that people must be primitive indeed to think like this. But welcoming the Sun every day is based on a profound truth, it really does make a difference to the nature of the world.

Anything said or done in a heartfelt way affects the world, contributes to its aliveness, stops it unravelling. This is how prayer and magic work. This is a form of cause and effect that is outside the scientific remit, but it is the most important form of all. Contributing to the world – saving the world, even, as if we could possibly know how – is not just a matter of direct action, though that has its place. It is also about inner work, of heartfelt intention, of prayer. And that connects us to the deeper soul of the world. It is that thing beyond us, that is vastly bigger than us, that makes the difference.

--------------------

I offer skype/FB video astrology readings, by donation. Contact: BWGoddard1 (at)aol.co.uk

---------------------

NB Please note the Free Email Subscribe button, top right of the page 😼  

Illness, Responsibility and Re-Framing the Story

In my last post I tried to bring the meaning of 'psychosomatic' back to its original etymology, which would suggest that certain physical illnesses are a malaise of the soul, rather than 'all in the head'. I was saying further that in this sense, ALL illnesses are psychosomatic, in the sense that there is always a spirit component in everything.

I guess we have the image of the traditional healer coming along and extracting something, or putting something back, or righting something in the spirit that has gone wrong. And that is all well and good. But I am also interested in the ill person finding their own way in, and becoming central to the healing.

And one way I am interested is in through the ill person changing their story around their illness. And a starting point for this can be to say: "The medical establishment says this is purely a physical illness for which you are therefore not responsible. But Body and Spirit are one, so let's see if we can find a a new story that includes both. And it may be a long process." So the healer becomes someone who helps the other person find the bigger story; and also may have a sense of that bigger story already. And within that bigger story may be a wounding, and beneath that wounding, a gift that has always been there.

The issue of responsibility is a tricky one. It carries such judgement around it, and it gets topsy-turvy. The medical establishment can say we are responsible when we are not (the way 'psychosomatic' is used, as if we've made a choice to be ill and need to snap out of it); and they can say we are not responsible when are able to be, because the Spirit has its own influence.

And the word 'choice' is also loaded. Our illness may be asking us to make a choice about getting well again, but at a deep level, an existential level, and we may not be used to making that sort of choice. It may be a choice about really wanting to be here on this planet, of wanting to incarnate. And Spirit is pushing us to do this by making us ill. Or our illness is the natural result of being out of balance. So a healer may be able to help us identify choices to be made.

So we need to bring 'choice' in, and its close companion 'responsibility'. But on an existential level, which the ill person may not be used to. And to find a way of re-framing our experience.

When I was 34, I had just spent several years heading up a large Buddhist Centre in London, that had all sorts of problems. And we turned the thing round, and at the end of it I felt like the plug had been pulled on my life-force. I had been very wilful in my work, and did not believe in what we were trying to create. But I was desperate to 'achieve' something. I had been conflicted and driving myself, and found myself unable to do anything apart from keeping myself going. The doctor diagnosed me with 'post-viral fatigue'. But I hadn't had a virus. It was his way of acknowledging the symptoms as real, by giving them a physical cause. I knew his diagnosis wasn't real. But I knew my symptoms were real, and I found myself quite anxious about that, feeling I had to justify myself to others, and not knowing if I would ever recover - as one doctor warned me!

But what I began to notice was that when I paid attention to things that deeply engaged me - in my case, astrology and shamanism - my symptoms went away. And these things were calling to me from a new centre in myself, a new depth. It was a feeling place that I had been over-riding for years. So I had to learn to listen to myself in a new way, and it was like a tightrope at first, that I would easily fall off. And it took about 4 years before I was ready to do anything again, and even then it could be touch and go.

So my own experience has shown me just how low we can be brought when we're out of alignment - and I did feel like I was only just about here, and like I didn't want to carry on if it meant living like I had been. But it also showed me a wonderful way out, if I was prepared to listen. It was an initiation. That was over 20 years ago. I've had another bout of being brought low in the last few years. This time it wasn't physical, it wasn't necessary, because I was more prepared to listen. And it seems to be another level of whatever it was that called me 25 years ago, pulling me on to the next stage. 

So I think key to this re-framing of illness can be listening closely to ourselves, listening like we've never listened before. Because other people, in my experience, do not usually listen deeply to us, so it is not something we learn from others. It is a solitary journey, a quest even, into our own Spirit. We have been brought to the Wasteland, the Underworld, the Lowerworld, and we need to find our way back to the Middleworld, but with the riches to be found in that below-place.

--------------------

I offer skype/FB video astrology readings, by donation. Contact: BWGoddard1 (at)aol.co.uk

---------------------

NB Please note the Free Email Subscribe button, top right of the page 😼  

All Illnesses are Psychosomatic

I was at a party the other night talking to 2 guys. One was 87 and took magic mushrooms for the first time 5 years ago; he'd grown them himself. The other was 84, and had been a doctor for 13 years, but he'd felt there was a lot missing. He'd been taught there are 13 basic causes of illness. He went on to become a healer, and came to the conclusion there were 3 or 4 causes of illness. And then one day a voice said to him unmistakeably that there is just one cause of illness, which is not being aligned with who you are. Sounds about right to me.

I regularly encounter people where their malaise seems to have a spirit component. But the way our culture expresses this is to say that it is 'psychosomatic' ie in their minds, the suggestion being that they are malingering in some way. And so the ill person then becomes desperate to prove that their symptoms are real. And that is because we have reduced the word psyche - as in psychosomatic - to mean the mind. Whereas actually it means soul. A malaise of the soul - psyche - manifesting through the body - soma. So in this sense, all illnesses are pyschosomatic: they all have a spirit component.

But - and here's the rub - the person who is ill may be unable to address the existential cause of the malaise. Or it's a long, slow process. And so they struggle with the illness for years. In some cases, it can even become who they are, they see themselves as a victim, and they can become accomplished at getting people to do things for them. And it may send them to an early grave. Because

the Spirit, when it wants change, can be ruthless. Witness the traditional shaman who gets ill, and will die unless he gives his/her life to Spirit. In a way, we are fortunate if we get ill for this kind of existential reason, because it means there is something in us that wants a deeper, philosophical, spiritual, existential engagement with life.

I think it is generally something in ourselves that is already there that needs to be listened to. And then the healing can begin. And it can take courage, because it may upset many of our treasured ideas of who we are. And it may upset other people's ideas of who we are and what they expect of us. But this thing isn't essentially about being nice or amenable, it is about being real. No amount of Soul Retrieval or being healed by others can sort this for us: it is something only we can find ourselves, and a good teacher/healer will point us in that direction - if we can listen. 

And it may be that we are wounded, that we have been traumatised at some points in our lives, and that is why we are ill, at least in part. And persuading those soul parts to come back, through coming into relationship with them, is part of the healing. And we can get a bit of help from others with this, though it is ourselves that has to decide to come into relationship with these parts. But it

also seems to be the case that this sort of wounding, these fissures in the psyche, are also the places where Spirit can come in, where the greater Self that wants to be born has a gateway: it uses these woundings. (In astrology, I think Chiron the wounded healer plays this sort of role.) And you can see the opposite of this in the way that some people don't seem to be bothered by their traumatised bits, they just 'happily' go on living in an unbalanced way, that's probably no good for them or for anyone around them, because there is no great call in them from Spirit to find that deeper alignment within themselves.

--------------------

I offer skype/FB video astrology readings, by donation. Contact: BWGoddard1 (at)aol.co.uk

---------------------

NB Please note the Free Email Subscribe button, top right of the page 😼  

On Belonging to the Natural World

The first shamanic course I went on in 1997 took place in a hired room in a city. We were taught how to journey to meet spirit helpers, and on that basis to do all sorts of other crazy things like putting pieces of people's souls back. It was wonderful stuff, and it changed me deeply. But we weren't taught about our place in the natural world, that we belong to her; that we can talk to the earth and thank her for everything good in our lives and pray for all the stuff that we need to sort, that causes us to suffer. And that we can pray for others too.

This context of belonging to, and gratitude towards, the natural world is foundational to any kind of indigenous way of living. And that is where shamanism needs to begin. Otherwise all that great spirit work we can do is at the same time easily funnelled into the disconnected modern mindset, which can view shamanism as a kind of add-on, as a career qualification. Instead of the long slow existential burn, in which anything we do like healing work or teaching is secondary.

All this started to become clear to me later, when a Native Canadian started coming to stay with me and we used to have long conversations round the dinner table. There is a quote from the poet Ted Hughes:  The story of mind exiled from Nature is the story of Western Man. This is where we need to begin. Face down on mother earth, talking to her and feeling her and thanking her.

In this 7 minute video, the Zen teacher Thich Nhat Nanh does a brilliant job of dismantling the worldview of a Physics professor, who thinks that humans are superior to animals. He points out that even having a thought is a product of all the mineral and animal layers within us, and that without them we do not exist. The video will give you an experience of belonging to the natural world, which is joyful, and which is the theme of this post.

--------------------

I offer skype/FB video astrology readings, by donation. Contact: BWGoddard1 (at)aol.co.uk

---------------------

NB Please note the Free Email Subscribe button, top right of the page 😼  

DREAMKEEPER

Had a few friends round to watch this film last night. Have seen it several times now. It's a great telling of some Native American stories in film form. And with a back-story of a road trip to the pow-wow by the grandfather-storyteller and his angry young grandson. The stories, the grandfather says, preserve the dream of the people.

One of my favourite moments is when they pick up a hitch hiker, a young white New-Ager who wants an Indian name. The grandson despises him as a 'wannabe' but the grandfather says no, he 'wannabe connected'. And he says to the grandson it wasn't these guys who drove us off our land, it was their forefathers. Being open to that longing in people that wants to do something, become something, seems so important to me, otherwise what are we doing? And it's so easy to tread on it if we are full of ideas about what is 'authentic' shamanism and what isn't. It doesn't matter, it's that other thing that matters.

--------------------

I offer skype/FB video astrology readings, by donation. Contact: BWGoddard1 (at)aol.co.uk

---------------------

NB Please note the Free Email Subscribe button, top right of the page 😼  

On Not Telling Your Left Hand What Your Right Hand is Doing

From the Gospel of St Thomas, a 'heretical' text:

Jesus said:" I tell my mysteries to those who are worthy of my mysteries. What thy right hand shall do, let not thy left hand know what it does."

I just commented on this in the FB group Esoteric Knowledge & Occult Science: "I tell my mysteries to those who are worthy of my mysteries". This is not something any of us could actually say without sounding horribly egotistical! But I think it refers to anything within us that carries power. If you talk about it too freely, it starts to lose that power, because of the reasons we are revealing it. It's like a novelist not talking about the plot of a book they are writing. Or not talking about your dreams unless you have good reason to do so. The left hand is the ordinary egotistical self that wants to blab on, show off about its great dreams and visions: aren't I mystical, guys? In the Native American traditions it is understood that you don't talk about your inner experiences, your connections to Spirit. Amongst the Eveni people of Siberia, they say if you talk about your dreams, they won't come true. So they don't talk about their good dreams, but they talk about their bad ones! Same sort of thing for the same reason.

--------------------

I offer skype/FB video astrology readings, by donation. Contact: BWGoddard1 (at)aol.co.uk

---------------------

NB Please note the Free Email Subscribe button, top right of the page 😼