TALKING SHAMANISM

This Thursday 3rd Sept at 7pm UK time on Zoom, I will be hosting a question and answer/discussion session on Shamanism and related topics. There will be no charge, no knowledge or experience is necessary, and you can come to all or part of it.

This is the zoom link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/83387306925

See you there😀

CAN INDIGENOUS THINKING SAVE THE WORLD?

This interview from the Rebel Wisdom guys (it's worth joining their email list) is with an Australian aborigine who is concerned not so much to explain indigenous ways to modern people, as to apply indigenous thought to the modern world. And critique, for example, our insistence on just one story, which I've been banging on about for years. Or the stupidity of applying 'solutions': rather we need to let things emerge. 

Tyson Yunkaporta has written a book, Sand Talk, that I've just ordered. It could be required reading :)

ZOOM MEDICINE WHEEL COURSE

 20th Sept to 17th Jan 6-8pm UK time on Sundays

The purpose of indigenous ways is to create and maintain balance as a human being, both within ourselves and with the world around us. The self, for indigenous peoples, is not isolated as in the modern world, but relational. The Medicine Wheel, which originated in the Americas, is rooted in the 4 Elements of the natural world, and is one way of maintaining this balance.

 

During this course we will spend one month on each of the 4 elements of Fire, Water, Earth and Air. In this way we will have time to live with them and get to know them. These Elements correspond respectively to the East, South, West and North of the Medicine Wheel that we shall be using. There are other correspondences as well, many of which we shall be exploring.

 

It will be very much a personal journey for each of us, as we look at our lives from the point of view of each Element/Direction. It will also build a sense of community, as we listen and respond to each other’s stories. I have just finished running the same course during lockdown, and the format worked well.

 

The basic structure will involve myself talking about the Wheel for approx. 1/3 of the time, and the rest of the time will be the participants sharing their own stories, according to the particular aspect of the Wheel under discussion. I also hope that you will construct your own Wheel, and develop a ceremonial relationship with it, as well as spending time in nature with each element as we are exploring it.

 

The themes will include:

 

EAST

Sources of wonder and inspiration as a child, as a teenager and as an adult. Times when a new element entered your consciousness, and the transformations around that.

 

SOUTH

The child – is he still there? How do you play? Do you have trust in life? Your shadow side, the woundings from childhood and from the culture. What has emerged from your most difficult periods?

 

WEST

Incarnation. What dreams did you start your adult life with, and how much were they your own? How do you manage the material world, and what is your relationship story? And what have been your encounters with death?

 

NORTH

The place of the Elder and balanced judgement. Did education teach you to use your mind? Are you able to appreciate all sides of an issue and those who differ from you politically? What is community about?

 

And finally (bringing in, as we sometimes will, the intermediate directions, in this case the North East), what dreams are you choosing to live by? Who do you want to become?

Money: I will be running this group on a donation basis. You will be donating directly to the Coyote Institute in the US, which is run by Lewis Mehl-Madrona (I recommend his book Coyote Medicine), who is part Cherokee-Lakota, and trained both as a traditional healer and a conventional doctor, both of which he has a passion for.

 

Lewis wrote to me: “We are primarily working with the 5 tribes of Maine, with Pine Ridge and Cheyenne River Reservations in South Dakota, and with Kodiak Island, Alaska. There's also Wabanaki Public Health, whom we partially support in Maine.”

 

I suggest a donation of between £50 and £150, or equivalent. Or more if you want! 

 

Here is Lewis' website: http://www.coyoteinstitute.us/donations.html

 

There will be a maximum of 15 participants so that we all have time to talk, and there will be a 2 week break over Christmas/New Year. If you wish to come, please comment underneath this post. If we are not over-subscribed, I will OK you to make a donation, and once you have done that, you will be on the course.

A JOURNEY AROUND THE MASCULINE AND FEMININE

Did a journey the other day. It was in my usual spirit-movement way, where the spirits pass through me and take over my bodily movements: this seems to be the norm amongst many Siberian and Mongolian shamans. I added a few extras, coming from Ulchi Shamanism: the drummer varied the drumbeat on an intuitive basis; there was no callback signal (which I have always found discordant); and I spoke my journey aloud as it happened.

Ulchi Shaman

In the journey I was shown the natural relationship between the masculine and feminine principles, with the masculine (me) like a chessboard king embodying action and initiative and natural authority, emerging from the infinite ground, the infinite connectedness, of the feminine, like the grid of Einstein's curved space. 

 

It was a message for me personally as a man about the relationship between masculine and feminine, in particular about the need for the masculine to be deeply in service to the feminine when it acts. And energetically, it was one more step in the decades-long process of deepening that relationship. 

 

It is only through being in service to the feminine that the king has his power. And the feminine needs to be found within, rather than vicariously through a relationship with a woman, which is the norm, and which can be a step along the way.

 

I am coming to realise that I will never be able to do relationship in the conventional way again, because it involves 2 people each enacting a part of the psyche for the other, and when that happens it is joyful and is called romantic love. But something in me no longer allows that, it is painful when it happens - it has always been painful for me, but I still used to do it. 

 

And I am sure many, if not all, of us have had experience of giving something of ourselves away in relationship. Many people are happy to live even their whole lives like that, as part-persons. It is 'normal'. But I think if Spirit is seriously trying to work through you, then a more whole, more balanced person is required.

 

In a dream last night I was supposed to be making cakes, but a woman was buying them in instead, and they were made of artificial ingredients. I see this not as a comment on women, but as saying that the real sweetness and nourishment comes from finding the woman within; having a woman do that for me is ersatz.

 

And I think the journey was also an illustration of not just the natural relationship between the masculine and feminine, but between male and female, because by and large they correlate. In these politically correct days one is not supposed to say this, and this is part of our modern confusion around men and women and their natural relationship. Put crudely, and at its worst, nowadays all women are supposed to want to be like warrior men in the workplace, and all men are supposed to acknowledge that their basic maleness is toxic. It is a horrible mess.

 

Two Spirit Flag

Of course there will be exceptions and big overlaps, and they are to be honoured, there is sacredness in these exceptions. And we are probably all a mixture of both. But the basic impulse of the male consciousness is to be courageous and get things done, and that of the female consciousness is to hold the vision and ensure that things are done in the right way. A healthy indigenous society understands this balance. 

 

And the fundamental problem with the modern world is that the relationship between the masculine and feminine, as embodied mainly in men and women respectively, has broken down so that men and women no longer know who they are, let alone have the capacity to listen to each other. It is why we treat the earth as an object to be exploited, instead of as our Mother who needs to be honoured and listened to and continually given thanks to and loved.

HEALING THE SOUL WOUND

Eduardo Duran has been working as a therapist within Native American communities for over 30 years. His book 'Healing the Soul Wound' addresses the different approaches that are necessary for people who have an indigenous, rather than a modern, world view. And inasmuch as we are all, at bottom, indigenous, I think the approach he has generated can speak to all of us. This would include:

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1/ Ceremony. Making the context sacred. Some simple smudging can achieve this.

2/ Seeing afflictions not as parts of ourselves, that define who we are, but as spirits that are visiting us. His major item here is alcoholism, which you get a lot of amongst Native Americans. He takes issue with the 'I am an acoholic approach' and says no, the spirit of alcohol is visiting you, and it can be a medicine or a poison. You need a new relationship with this spirit, so introduce yourself, make offerings, give thanks, ask the spirit to introduce itself and let's try and move this thing on. This approach immediately changes the clients relationship to the bottle, and makes it harder to drink. Drinking itelf is seen as a ceremony - indeed the whole of life, he maintains, is a ceremony.

Eduardo Duran

3/ So this approach can be applied more widely - to the spirit of fear/anxiety, depression/sadness, suicide (which is traditionally seen as a literalised attempt at transformation), anger, indeed anything you want. And to the spirit of healing itself.

4/ The self is relational, not isolated, as we find in the modern world. So when you introduce yourself to a spirit, you tell them also who your parents and grandparents were/are, and ask the spirit to do the same. And because we are relational, the affliction we are addressing may have been passed down through the family, and we are the ones with the task of healing it. And when we do, it is said, it heals backwards in time for 7 generations, and forwards for the next 7 generations.

5/ The Soul Wound, to which the title refers, is in the case of the Native Americans the collective wound caused by white colonisation. It is not just the trauma of violence, but the attempt to colonise the mind of the Indian with the modern mindset by eg sending them to boarding schools. This also needs addressing in therapy, and helps the individual to understand that their suffering is not because there is something 'wrong' with them, but something they have inherited through the collective past. An equivalent for moderns might be the Protestant Work Ethic, that keeps us busy and getting up early, and doubting ourselves if we do not conform - and judging of those who are 'idle'.

6/ Warrior Soul Wounding. Traditionally, war was seen as a ceremony, and if you killed someone, that was understood as a spirit contract between you. And the taking of life, even in the service of your community, still goes against natural law. So there is healing work to be done, that is not understood amongst returning war veterans, who do not even have a ceremony when they leave the armed services. So in this book, it applies particularly to Native American veterans.

7/ Duran is not afraid to be radical in his ideas. One holy cow he addresses is therapetic boundaries, which he considers in many cases to have a dehumanising effect. Besides, in a traditional situation, the healer would be known intimately by everyone in the village. And this would place more responsibility on the healer to have integrity in all parts of his life, so as not to compromise the healing situation.