A SHOUT, A DECLARATION FROM THE SPIRIT WORLD

This is a bit of a thought experiment, and I'm going to be a bit controversial, so please take it in that spirit.

It is this. The way many of us have been taught to encounter the Spirit World is through 'shamanic journeying', as taught by Michael Harner. And it is safe. It suits cerebral westerners who don't want anything too physical or too expressive, and which can therefore achieve a kind of respectability in the worlds of academia (Harner's world) and therapy.

And it works. To some extent. It worked for me and it changed me, many years ago. But most of the raw power is missing. We don't do primordial. When I go to the Spirit world, it is these things. I am taken over physically by the Spirit and I am expressive both physically and verbally in a way that is all-consuming and entirely free-flowing. And it is therefore ecstatic. I have had dogs barking at me when I work, for they sense the animal presence that could dispatch them with a swipe of its claw. 

In the Harner method (which no indigenous person I have ever heard of uses) the body is not involved, and nor is speech/song. THE SPIRIT CANNOT INCARNATE. For Mongolians shamans, it is standard that the spirit comes into you physically. It is standard too in voodoo, and maybe that is why we are terrified of it. It is the power of the irrational, of the unconscious. Harner tries to tame it, to keep it in the service of the rational mind. But you can't do it. Spirit will erupt and destroy that puny edifice.

Trance dance is maybe the nearest we get to this true surrender to Spirit. That is where it began for me. It is such a deep encounter, because Spirit gets to use the whole of us.

And I would like to see the way we teach journeying change fundamentally so that it is geared towards this experience, and doing healing work on that basis. I might even say that if you can't let Spirit use you in this sort of way, then it's not your path. Let us have no more tame 'shamanic practitioners'. Let us have those who are able to be unashamedly possessed by Spirit. It's the real deal.