THIS ABOVE ALL: TO THINE OWN SELF BE TRUE

So it's late evening, I've had some red wine, and I always post somewhere after a glass or two. At this stage it is medicine not poison - or anaesthetic - which is why most nights I don't drink. Same with tobacco. I gave up cigarettes 24 years ago, it was all or nothing, I was only smoking 6 or 7 roll-ups a day, but all the same I felt something had control of me, had its teeth in my side, and that isn't something I like. I find nicotine more addictive than alcohol, though as I say, I still find the latter to be an anaesthetic that subtly rolls on through the next day.

And I reckon I have entered the last 1/3 of my life - being 62 - so I want awareness to play a part. Good karma for wherever I go next I guess. But no, this life is a value in itself, whatever you think about what comes next. So let us oldies do the aware thing while the younger generation are doing their binge drinking in a way that we never used to do. I'm not complaining about them - the older generation is on record complaining about the various lacks of the younger generation as far back as the ancient Greeks, so their lack of respect for our wisdom is timeless, and probably just as well too. Wouldn't it be awful if they respected us?

So I'm coming to the point, which is this: this path is about being true to ourselves. Honest with ourselves. True to the 4 elements that the Medicine Wheel unpacks us into, true to the centre of that Wheel. True to whatever whisperings our guides lob our way: and remember that we ALL talk bullshit sometimes, that has allegedly come from our guides. Being true to our guides - true to our intuition, however you want to put it - is exacting. It is an art that is not properly taught.

I want to do two things: introduce people to embodied journeying, like the Mongol Shamans do when they dance. There is an extra, visceral power there. Spirit loves to be embodied. And then learn that other dance of trusting what you are shown and not trusting it too. This is a big area. I think generally we are taught the trust half, and not the skeptical half too. We need to do both, without one cancelling the other half out. Your shadow always wants to get in too, it is coyote.

Your shadow will always be with you, it will keep your feet on the ground and will keep you learning and will keep you on a level with everyone else. And will mislead you too. If someone says they have done their shadow work, I guard my wallet. This is hubris. It is never done. If you can honestly say that you have come into some sort of relationship with some of your shadow, then you are being honest, and you are qualified to teach. And that is also about being true to yourself.

So this great path we are on, that is completely open and that says that all is sacred. Within that context, our mission is to become balanced, to become whole. And we can only do that by being true to who we are. And we may not even know that we are not doing that. But Spirit will show us. Oh yes, and it probably won't be pretty or easy. So listen to those parts, live those parts, that would mess your life up if you were to live them. There is no other way, not if you don't want to get ill or die with regrets.

And it may be that you just haven't been ready to live that niggling bit, because you were doing other things. And maybe you thought you could put that niggling bit aside while you got on with your 'real' life that makes you a regular sort of guy who 'stays safe' and claps the NHS on a Thursday night and is a good wife or husband.

Nothing wrong with all that, but the Shamanic Path, if it comes calling, is saying sorry, I'm going to mess all this up, and cause sorrow to others, and you may feel terribly guilty as a result, but there is this other thing you have to do, which somewhere you have always known about, and its time has come. Yes, you may have to break up your family, and this is tough, but that is sometimes Spirit’s nature. It has its own imperatives.

So the stranger comes knocking at your door, and you know that you have to go with him. You don't know where he is taking you - there is no career path, no pension plan, nothing like that - but you go with him all the same, because you know you have to. And you may hold off, because you don't have good 'reasons' to give others – or yourself. But this isn't about 'reason', it is about something else you have to do, that you have always known was there. And you may have to let others put you in the 'nutcase' category, and do not hold it against them if they do, for it is their only way of keeping their own world together.

And it will continue like this. This is the price of being true to who you are: there will probably be others close to you who think, at least for a while, that you have lost the plot. And you have to live with this. And I am sure they will be very nice about it.

Your sense of who you are no longer comes from the approbation of others, not from a certificate or qualification, but from your own unique connection to Spirit. From your own inner guide – and about time too! So do not make the mistake of thinking that your 'Shamanic Practitioner' training certificate has any real value from a Shamanic point of view. And you will find you have your own fire of self-doubt to go through along the way, this is usually part of it.

This is the difference between religion – and what? Heresy? Mysticism? You will find most people in the religious category, and that includes Shamanism. This is not a put-down, it is just human nature to base your sense of who you are around qualifications and the approbation of others. Often people are half in and half out. It is important not to damn them for it, for it is their path. And they will always deny it, for everyone thinks they are autonomous, even when you can see that they aren’t. You just have to leave them to it.

Sometimes, and it may take 20 years, people will have a crisis, and stick their heads a bit further out of the rabbit hole. And that may be their learning for this lifetime. This path is slow, and anything that suggests otherwise needs to be treated with caution.

Religion (in the form of Buddhism) was my own path for many years. I am still not always as sure of my own connection to Spirit as I might be, and I am still trying to sort out Shamanism-as-religion from Shamanism as authentic path. Indigenous people are mixed like this too, but modern people like to idealise them, and this point often doesn’t go down well. I got blocked from 2 big FB Shamanic groups for saying this. And it helped waken me to the sizeable religious following in our modern Shamanism.

We need to allow others to be religious in their Shamanism – up to a point. Coyote is always prowling, looking for a way in, and if we listen to him, we will find ways of intruding on the Shamanists’ comfort zones without pissing them off too much. If we piss them off too much, then maybe we need look to our own motives, maybe to a need to have others think like we do.