THE SHAMAN and SOCIETY

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So this is a follow-up to my April 17 piece in which I was talking about the difficult process of finding one's own authority: that balanced place within, that strong foundation from which to view the world, in which we are neither going along with the rules unquestioningly, nor rebelling against them.

I think there is a particular issue if you are Shamanic, or in any way 'spiritual', which is that there is little room for Spirit nowadays in the conventional view of the world. At least in the Middle Ages Spirit officially existed, though how it was viewed was very circumscribed. So if you had your own connection to Spirit, it could be a problem, particularly if you were vocal about it. But at least its very existence was not denied. This is religion.

 

Nowadays you just have to look at conventional medicine to see the establishment view: humans are so much inert matter, operating according to physical/chemical laws. The Spirit, which in my view is the most fundamental part of any healing process, is not seriously considered.

We grow up as creatures of convention, we need that, it provides our early protection and our education. But what if we later find that who we are is not to be found within those constraints that are part of any society?

I am circling round my point here, so maybe I will go autobiographical. I grew up in aspirational surroundings in which there was no room for Spirit. By my late teens it was becoming clear to me that Spirit was what I was fundamentally about. I did not, however, have the solidity in myself to feel confident in that, in the face of so much else that was denying it. So I created, for my own psychological survival, a new self, based not just on an affirmation of Spirit, but also on a rejection of all convention as nonsense, as inferior, as meaningless, as out to deny who I was. Any kind of external authority was suspect.

This was an unconscious process of survival. And, up to a point, it served me. It gave me the space for my connection to Spirit to deepen and unfold. But, as the Native Americans say, 'Don't tell me about your visions unless they grow corn.' Spirit has to be integrated with ordinary life, with society as it is, or we are not much use to anyone.

So at a certain point - and it was not until I was in my 50s - I made a deliberate decision to stop assuming that external authority was acting against my interests and those of everyone else, and that anyone in a position of authority was suspect. And this applied even to those arch embodiments of authority and the status quo, the police and members of the Tory Party. This decision immediately had a big impact on me. I became much more at ease with who I am, less on the defensive, less divided against myself. More part of society. And more able to see clearly the mixture of things going on when eg a Tory politician was speaking. And able to see the genuine desire to be of service that is usually in that mix.

The reason I am going on about this, is that I have frequently observed this reflex opposition to the establishment and to authority in 'spiritual' circles. As I said earlier, it can serve us at the start of our path, but it becomes a hindrance later on. It contains an inherent paranoia, and makes us susceptible to fantastical ideas about being controlled by dark forces. It makes us mean-spirited in our assessment of those in authority. It does not have true agency.

If you think about a medicine person or a shaman in a traditional society, would they have lived in opposition to the more 'worldly' powers within their society? That is not my reading of how those societies worked/work. Of course they would have advice to give at times, particularly if the voice of Spirit was not being heeded, which humans with their egos are always prey to :) But a Shaman is both integrated within society, as well as having a loyalty to Spirit, which can come from somewhere quite different.

I think it is difficult for many of us not to have, at least to some degree, a false self that is defined by its opposition to external authority, because we live in a society that often denies the very existence of Spirit. The way out lies NOT in creating a self that bows down to authority. The way out lies in not having a self at all, in letting go of that unconscious energy-consuming process of defining who we are, and allowing reality in without judgment. Then we can be the hollow bone that Spirit needs us to be, so that we can do the work that Spirit needs us to do.