Vision Board

Bugger the Law of Attraction. I prefer prayer, meaning a heartfelt conversation with the natural world. In which we give thanks for all the good things in our lives, and in which we appreciate that our mother the Earth is benign and generous and that we are inseparable from her. 

And that she will provide all that is needed to make our lives and those of others work as they need to. But usually not in the ways that our tiny consciousness, that is always messing up, and that is so much smaller than hers, imagines. Prayer, to be effective, needs to be congruent with our lives, it is not a wish list.

And with this in mind I've been making a vision board over the last 2 days. As a prayer for the next stage of my life. I've had a lurgy for the last few days, and when that happens (quite rarely) I get knocked out of my usual day-to-day ways and into what matters. They are productive times, and they usually come at the end of a stressful period.

But events are now in motion that mean I will probably be in a position to buy myself a house with a bit of land and maybe a barn or two in the autumn. That will be a good place for me, but also a place where, some of the time, people can gather. Gather in the sort of way that I like to gather, which is quite social and informal. And where there is space for tipis and sweatlodges and transformation

and play. And quiet, with no neighbours looking in. And where the element of ecstasy, that comes with Spirit, and that was suppressed for so long by the church, is possible. And maybe above all, Shamanic Community. That is what moves me. So all the things and people necessary for this, I am asking for.

JUNG: THE SOLAR VOYAGE and THE SEA MONSTER

This is a painting from Jung's Red Book. I have it on my wall. The Red Book is the product of the WWI years, when Jung was being initiated into the spirit world at a deeper level. It would be called the shaman's illness in a Siberian culture, when the spirits make you an offer you cannot refuse - not, at any rate, if you want your life back. What is required, in a way, is a commitment to your own soul. And the Red Book is largely an account of Jung's conversations with a spirit guide, Philemon. That is why it was not published until recently, after his son, who was concerned for his father's scientific reputation, had died.

The painting depicts the solar voyage of consciousness towards its goal. But accompanying the ship, unseen, is a sea monster. Coming to terms with those depths - with the Underworld - is the real purpose of the journey. There is no goal, nowhere to travel to, that is just a delusion of rational ego-consciousness, what is nowadays called 'spiritual bypass'.

There is only the ever-closer approach to the centre, to who we always were. And this is a theme of the 2nd Saturn Return (aged 58-59), when we can let go of the striving, and trust in what emerges from within. And we can trust it because, instead of judging and fighting him, we have formed a relationship with the sea monster.

WERE EARLY PEOPLE LESS INDIVIDUAL THAN OURSELVES?

Sometimes I hear it said that early, indigenous peoples are less individual than we moderns, more subsumed in collective consciousness. In fact, I heard someone quoted to this effect recently, who had spent years training with African medicine people. And I don't know if it is true and, if so, to what extent.

First of all, the 2 people I have known who belong to 'tribal' peoples and have had traditional trainings show no lack of independent thought. Someone else described to me being around a circle of aboriginal elders, and what he noticed was how distinct they all were in their characters. And then there is a piece written by Lewis Mehl-Madrona, who says that post-modernism, with its lack of absolute certainties, is hard for most people to live with - unless they are shamans, who get their power from this alignment with the flow of Spirit. And at the same time he says that, in his experience, most tribal people have a fairly simple set of certainties and beliefs by which they live. And he quotes another elder who said that to the effect that all creation stories are provisional, really we don't know how everything came to be.

Individual or Collective?

So I am of the opinion that people with wisdom, who you find amongst indigenous peoples worldwide, are not lacking in individual consciousness, far from it. I feel quite strongly about this, like it is a put-down, our modern arrogance, to categorise indigenous people in this way.

What remains, however, is your average indigenous person, who is not an elder/medicine person. And the question is are they significantly more subsumed in collective consciousness than we are? I don't know the answer to this question, because I have no experience. What does make me question it, however, is my experience of people in our own culture being less individual than they would like to think. 

 

I see it all the time in one-sided political opinions, where so many people seem unable to appreciate that there is any validity in views different to their own. They are, in other words, merely part of a righteous grouping. It does not appear so to themselves, however, and you cannot say it to them. Or the sense of certainty that people often attribute to our modern, scientific, creation stories, to the extent that you may be perceived as being wilfully contrary, or just irrational, if you question these assumptions. And when I do individual counselling sessions with people, the felt pressure to live or be a certain way, that comes from the collective, is nearly always a theme.

So regarding our own culture, my opinion is that while we value the room to be an individual, we are usually not nearly as individual as we would like to think. I have no reason to doubt that most indigenous peoples are/were subsumed within collective values/stories, because I think that is human nature, and I don't see anything wrong with that. What I do question is our modern assumption that we are beyond that, for I find the evidence all around me that we are not.

RE-INVENTING MYSELF

'If it's real, it works; if it works, it's real'. So said Jim Tree in The Sacred Way of the Pipe. And I think this applies muchly to the way Leo Rutherford works. Leo has a good dose of the trickster spirit running through him, and he continually bounces you out of the way you thought you saw the world. He has just about the right amount of disrespect for tradition. And, at 83, is as sharp as ever. Though I'm not sure he tells the truth about his age.

I did a couple of long courses with Leo in the late 90s, and they provided a context for me to make a big transition, much bigger than I thought, from one life to the next. And I've just been on the 1st of a series of 3 Sweatlodge weekends with him. It's supposed to be about running Sweatlodges, and it is about that, but I noticed quite quickly uh-oh something else is kicking in. I'm going through the 2nd major transition of my adult life, 20 years on from the first, and it intensified during the weekend. That's why I'm really on this I thought.

I've felt pole-axed, in a good way, since the Sweat on Sunday. That is what sweats often do to me. They knock me sideways, knock all the crap from the surface, and leave me with whatever deeper process is going on. And this may occur around, rather than in, a sweat. Or even, once, just by talking about them. I went to one 2 years ago, and just before I went in I realised with absolute clarity, the sort that runs right through you, that it was finally time to leave the long-term relationship I was in. I had struggled with that for 5 years. I know how to resist change!

And I've been in an intense limbo ever since, very close to myself, a lot of solitude. And last weekend's sweat seemed to begin pushing me down a long birth canal.That which needed to heal is starting to heal. More specifically, and I say this guardedly, I have felt the spirit of an elder, as it were, knocking loudly at my door for some years now. He has been there my whole life, wanting to get in. And he has been more insistent of late, and the feeling of awakening around it reduces me to tears.

At the same time, I have also spent my life on guard, holding back, with a very young side of me that is terrified of life. I've been holding his hand for some years now, and that has helped. But the change over the weekend has been this elder spirit joining me and engaging with the very young me. It feels like he is going to take care of him, and help him change, from now on. And this is why I continue to feel pole-axed, because it is a deep process, a deep change. And it is also why I now feel at the start of a long birth canal, because my life will be able to happen in a new way.

As it happens, Leo is about to start a series of 4 long weekends on the Medicine Wheel. It was on the last such course I was on in 1999 that I re-invented myself - or co-operated with being re-invented. The Medicine Wheel is a great way of reviewing and re-dreaming your life. So I may go on this course too.

The Xenophobia of Early Peoples?

On mainland Britain, the early hunter-gatherers were genetically almost completely replaced by the first farmers, who were in turn genetically almost completely replaced by the Beaker people. So very little mixing of the populations.

In its piece on Stonehenge, the BBC doesn't comment on this stark fact, which is very strange: it is probably tied up with political correctness. But it says to me that early peoples were probably just as likely as we are to regard foreigners as less than human, and why not, we must have got that trait from somewhere.

Sweatlodge

Just off for a weekend on running Sweatlodges, led by Leo Rutherford. I'm going to be staying in a treehouse! It's been many years since I've been on something led by Leo, though I went on a couple of long courses of his in the 90s which helped get me up and running with this Shamanic thing, and out of the Buddhist thing that had begun to strangle me. It's about 15 years since I ran a Sweatlodge, and I'm supposed to be leading one at the Shamanic Gathering this year, so I thought I would brush up on them in good company. 

And I love sweats, for me they are the epitome of what this Shamanic thing is about. And I think they are something we have to re-invent for ourselves, there is no 10-year traditional training for us to go through. But I think if you've been to the underworld and back in your own life and begun to sort a few things in the process, that gives you an underlying qualification to do quite a lot of things. 

There is a spirit of freedom and openness and tolerance in what is called the New Age, which is sometimes used as a put-down for not being serious. But even though it can have its faults, I think there is something in that spirit that describes who we moderns are and how we connect with spirit, there is a power in it for us to claim. And that is the way in which I see our re-inventions of the Sweatlodge.

THE VOICE OF YOUR OWN SOUL

When you take the time to draw on your listening-imagination, you will begin to hear this gentle voice at the heart of your life. It is deeper and surer than all the other voices of disappointment, unease, self-criticism and bleakness. All holiness is about learning to hear the voice of your own soul. It is always there and the more deeply you learn to listen, the greater surprises and discoveries that will unfold. 

To enter into the gentleness of your own soul changes the tone and quality of your life. Your life is no longer consumed by hunger for the next event, experience or achievement. You learn to come down from the treadmill and walk on the earth. You gain a new respect for yourself and others and you learn to see how wonderfully precious this one life is. You begin to see through the enchanting veils of illusion that you had taken for reality. You no longer squander yourself on things and situations that deplete your essence. You know now that your true source is not outside you. Your soul is your true source and a new energy and passion awakens in you.

JOHN O'DONOHUE

The Secrets of the English Magic Tarot

A few years ago my friend Rex Vanryn created The English Magic Tarot. Soon afterwards he came off social media and spent his time living out the major arcana of this deck, one card at a time, one month at a time. We meet up most weeks (Rex lives in nearby Chagford) and so I was privy to some of the strange and wonderful synchronicities that occurred. 

Having survived this journey (and that really couldn't be taken for granted as he traversed some of the more life-changing cards), he is now back with us. And has recently begun a Facebook group for this exploration of this, and other, tarot decks. And in which his recent esoteric journeyings will gradually be revealed