MONDAY MORNING DIGRESSIONS

To adapt an old Hermetic maxim: "Spirit is all-encompassing. Its centre is everywhere, its periphery nowhere."

The maxim is in Marie-Louise von Franz's book CG Jung: His Myth in our Time, which is a great run through the basics of Jung by someone who was his close collaborator for many years. For me, Shamanism and Jung are completely congruent. They are both completely open to Spirit. The Unconscious, in Jung's use of it, and Spirit are the same thing.

Of course you will get both Jungians and Shamanists who are not completely open, and then you have religion, because you have fixity. And it's a phase that maybe many of us go through. For me it's been a gradual process over many years, and it's still work in progress.

Of course everyone will SAY they are open and their shamanism isn't religion. But religion isn't a crime, and it is rooted in an emotional need for authority and certainty, rather than being primarily an intellectual position. And I think we all have that to some degree. It is the human condition. It is why when someone contradicts us, we leap in to defend our position. I sometimes make a point of trying to explore what the other person has said, which ain't easy, but it's a fabulous thing to do, and others will notice, because it is unusual.

Matter is the Dream of Spirit, they are not different to each other. The purpose of our lives is not to ascend to a 'spiritual' realm, but to incarnate, to bring spirit into matter: in other words, to engage with the world, to show up, to be here, and in-so-doing to become balanced and whole. That doesn't mean that periods of withdrawal cannot be immensely useful, nor does it mean that we have to become full-on members of the rat-race. But we have a body that is also spirit, and it needs to be used. I think that the metaphor of 'Ascension' is not useful, and easily leads to the avoidance of the Shadow. In fact it may be the attraction of such a metaphor in the first place.

I've just run the first evening of a 4-month exploration of the Medicine Wheel, courtesy of Zoom. I'd say it is a North exploration, inasmuch as it is about people telling their stories from the viewpoint of the different elements/ directions. And story-telling belongs in the North. It is the place of the Elder and the Wisdom-keeper, and how else do they transmit that wisdom but through stories? Religion has doctrines, and in the same tradition science has its theories/doctrines. But wisdom is not contained in doctrines as much as it is in stories, because stories speak to our hearts and to our imaginations, they enthrall us. And wisdom is a function of the whole person, not just of our heads. And wisdom is spontaneous too: traditional stories are not told as prepared set-pieces, but in response to whatever is happening there and then in the 'audience'.

The North, the Air element, the mind, comes last on the Medicine Wheel I use: the mind is such a tricksy thing, and we need to do the other elements/faculties first, so that we can use our mind in a balanced way; so that it can be in service of Spirit instead of thinking it is the master, which of course is one of the problems in our modern culture.

Shamanism begins not with doctrines but with something very simple: the experience of belonging to the natural world. So go outside and appreciate and give thanks to the different elements that we humans have divided the natural world into: the Sun, the Rain, the Soil and the Wind. And do that several times a week, let the natural world nourish you. If anything is 'core' shamanism, it is this. If you read about shamanic cultures, their lives are rooted in this experience, and in continually giving thanks to the spirits around them, which are not different to the natural world, everything has a spirit and a point of view.

So I am out on Dartmoor several times a week, I am grateful to live in such a place. And I am grateful for all the things that work in my life. I am grateful for the zoom course that has just started and all the people who are attending; I am grateful for the house I live in, which has come at a time of a big transition and which takes care of me; I am grateful for my health and very grateful for the renewed vigour, greater than ever before, that has come to me at the age of 62, which I wasn't expecting; I am grateful for the world of books and ideas and all its riches that I spend a lot of time in. And for my ability to write what is in me and for the people who read it and appreciate it, that is a gift too. And I am grateful for all the friends I have made in the last few years.

There are major things in my life that I would like to be there but aren't. But there are always going to be things like that, and it is a matter of what we concentrate on. And trust in what is NOT happening in your life, as well as in what is happening. Spirit knows what it is doing. We may not need all the things that we want; or it may not be time, it may be years off even; and sometimes it is about making changes in ourselves so that those things can happen, and how can Spirit deliver if we are not ready?

So this is the thing about prayer. I was introduced to it in a Navajo way, but by an ex-Catholic westerner who also viewed prayer as a kind of bucket list, and if you prayed exactly and precisely for what you wanted, then you would get it. But it's not like that. Sometimes we get the opposite of what we pray for, because there is a deeper thing going on that we cannot see. So prayer begins by giving thanks for all the things that work, and then we move into a kind of dreaming, an aligning of ourselves with the deeper purposes of spirit. That is why we may need to talk at length when we pray, we may need to circle round and round until that deeper clarity is reached, where we let go of our superficial sense of lack, and move to a place that is aligned with Spirit and that can truly nourish us. And when we do that, it comes from the heart, and how can such prayers not come true, albeit in their own way and in their own time?

The picture above is of Chinkwell Tor on Dartmoor. I was there on Saturday with Typhaine, Alexandra, Claire, Phil and Susanne. We started at Bonehill Rocks and wandered on to Bel Tor, Chinkwell Tor and Honeybag Tor, then back to the tearoom in Widecombe. I have a book of circular walks on Dartmoor, it is a great way to do it and you can get these books for most areas. We meet every couple of weeks and do things like walks and journeying and Pipe Ceremonies and we do a lot of talking, and that is the way I like my shamanism, it's something you pick up along the way by doing stuff together. And there is maybe something traditional in that.