Being an Elder is better thought of as something that works through you, rather than something that you are. It is a responsibility you carry for the community at large, and if you are sensitive, how is that something that you, as a lone individual, can carry? You cannot. It would burn you out. It is Spirit working through you that is the Elder.
And what Spirit has in mind... well who knows? You may end up looking like you have fucked up royally, for now anyway, because there is some larger purpose at play. Gandalf gets it, when he says that the appalling Gollum has some part to play in the future unfolding of the great Middle Earth drama.
You always have your eye on the bigger picture as an Elder, and you may not have the words for it, but you have a sense of it, and people will respond to that sense, and not over-insist on the words and the logic. And you will not mind that it sometimes looks like you have fucked up, that is why you have earned your place as an Elder. Politicians at their best are Elders to some extent, even the ones you don't vote for, and they are always having to carry the can for messes that probably began before they were in power. Or having to make decisions for which there are downsides whichever way they look.
Caring too much about what others think of us is part of the human condition. It is necessary up to a point, else how would we ever have community? But nowadays we have the worst of both worlds: we are often obsessed with the values of society - keeping busy, getting up early, not looking like a down-and-out - yet we are atomised, we do not hold together very well. Everyone thinks they are independent, but minds so much what the neighbours think.
The Elder has found their way out of all this, their buttons are not so pressable, they can put their feet up at any time, they don't give a s^$t, and that is why Spirit trusts them. Have you noticed that you have to earn the trust of Spirit? Spirit will always love you, and will always help you, and that can be in hard, dismembering ways that go on for years - if you are so honoured - which will make you listen in new ways. Because listening to ourselves and to the wider Spirit that we are a part of is key, is where it all grows from.
And I want to mention Leo Rutherford at this point. He is in his mid 80s, and like any authentic Elder he is not perfect, and he says the 'wrong' things. He says that climate change theory - which is usually presented as fact, not theory - is open to question, shock horror, and I have even heard him express agreement with some aspects of Tory policy. Now how can this be? Surely anyone who is spiritual cannot have any sympathy whatsoever with the Tory Party? But this is one thing Elders do - they are coyote, they upset the assumptions by which most of us live. It is not wilful, it is genuine.
Elders understand that any description of the world is provisional, it is a story: really we know nothing, it is all the Great Mystery. But we need stories, and we also need contradictory stories so that we do not sink into that lazy human tendency to live by and stand by just one story - like Christianity used to, and like Science often does nowadays.
Evolution and the Big Bang are generally the only Creation Myths in town these days - anything else is 'just' a story. A decent Elder will bust you out of this - but may appear as a wilful eccentric along the way. And climate change is no different - how could a mere scientific theory ever encompass more than a sliver of the truth in this beautiful dream of Mother Earth of which we are a part? Yet we have divided ourselves into 'respecters of truth' and 'climate deniers'. As I say, a good Elder will bust you out of this dichotomy. Elders are not always comfortable to be around, or they would not be doing their job. But it is all in the interests of holding a bigger picture in our minds, and having a sense of what we cannot know.
We are in such a hurry in our culture, and we want something to show for it. This Shamanic path is a slow-burn one, and needs nothing to show. The essence of it is about coming into a good relationship with yourself. It is not about being able to talk to Spirit Guides or being a great healer or being able to wax lyrical about how you can communicate with nature, valuable as all those may be. No, I repeat, it is about coming into a good relationship with yourself. A deep relationship. And this generally takes many years. We may need dismembering along the way, we may need to lose jobs and relationships and homes and values and health and be betrayed. Or we may need to just steadily incarnate in a conventional kind of way for 20 years. Whatever, this life is like an oak tree, not an annual, and we need the winters to regroup and re-dream.
Or rather, to be redreamed. For it is not under our control, though it can seem so with the short view. With the long view, as you come out of some 20-year relationship or career wondering what the hell that was all about, you can start to get the big picture that Spirit has always held. And Spirit is prepared to take its time, it thinks nothing of taking 20 years for you to learn one big thing, which it probably tricked you into in the first place. (That is what romantic love is: a trick to get us to eventually encounter our shadow side.) The big things have the depth, and they take the time, and if you learn one big thing in this lifetime then you are graced. You are indeed a hedgehog (who knows one big thing) as opposed to a fox (who knows lots of small things - Archilochus).
Our Shamamic Tribe is splintered. It has not fallen apart, it has just never come together. Not adequately, at any rate. The real Elders, I suspect, have often kept themselves to themselves, knowing that it is enough just to be an authentic human being - for what else is this Shamanic thing about?
Shamanism is an attempt to recapture the naturalness of early humans, which of course is still in us, and at a time before there were these big stages on which humans could display themselves and claim to be maestros. Shamanism to me is the perennial philosophy, beyond time and place and holy books and teachers, and which nowadays arises wherever you have a society that is free enough to allow freedom of thought and expression.
That is not something I take for granted. It may pass. Large complex societies do not maintain stability through relationships, but through impersonal rules, and sometimes those rules become rigid. And you never know when that will happen. History is not an onward march to freedom, it is a hit and miss thing. So I am thankful that, for now, we can do this Shamanic thing in a free kind of way.
You find the Elder in the North of the Medicine Wheel, where you also find Community. The Elder is able to provide a heart, guidance, a focus for community to happen without too many people falling out with each other - he/she straddles all sides of the partial viewpoints that seem perennial to people. In our culture, people often end up as teachers quite early, and that is partly because we think 'professionally', where we see personhood in terms of acquiring a set of skills and competences that we present to the world. Some people may indeed be ready to be Elders when young, but I don't think that is usually the case: we need many years of slow roasting and transformation. I think it is for this reason that we are not, IMO, very good at community in the shamanic world. We have many small circles, headed by people who may or may not have a good relationship with their own shadows. And the big conferences you see: I'm sure they do valuable stuff, but the emphasis is too much 'come along because such-and-such an Elder will be there'. Community needs to happen more organically and under the radar than this, it is not about occasional events where certain 'names' are promoted.
Shamanism is not about a display of 'skills', it is about your soul and other people's souls, which is something quite different. And if you do big yourself up, if you list all these testimonials about how wonderful you are or call yourself a master or even a pipe carrier or whatever, then you haven't really understood what this path is about, there is something you haven't sorted in yourself yet, you haven't mastered your ego, Spirit is not yet calling the shots to the extent that is needed and you shouldn't be up there doing this stuff.
I am not suggesting we need to be free of our shadow stuff, that will always be there, in fact it also serves us, it keeps us humble - if we are in an honest relationship with it - that is the key, and that is what takes the time, maybe decades. And that is what gives us the wisdom. Anyone can have a Spirit connection, but not anyone has the integrity to spend the years integrating that connection with the rest of who they are. Doing that is what gives us the real wisdom, and not doing that is what causes the most damage as a teacher - as a fake Elder. It's usually more mixed than that, but I think I've made the point.
Let's face it: the bulk of humanity wants simple beliefs and certainties, and always has done: this is how the world was made, this is how the universe works. This is what makes you a good person, and this makes you a bad person. And so on. Science, with its simple answers around origins and death, is no different to the simple stories that have always been around. In our quest for simple beliefs and certainties, we also project spirituality onto indigenous people rather than own it in ourselves - which is a demanding thing to do - and become reverent and unquestioning when they enter the room. This is just religion all over again. Enough of Popes!
But the Elder understands this. There is not something ‘wounded’ going on when this happens. It is just humanity as it has always been, indigenous or otherwise. An Elder will say enough to shake up the tramlines, but not so much as to frighten the horses.
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