THE SHAMANIC GROUND OF BEING

The greatest gift that Shamanism has given me is the experience of the earth as sacred. Before Shamanism I spent many years involved with a world-transcending form of Buddhism that eventually made me ill. In that sense it was just a continuation of the old Christian separation of Body and Spirit, which at root is an attempt by organised religion to control people. As the saying goes, if you get people by the balls (ie control sex), their hearts and minds will follow. This principle was first articulated by Theodore Roosevelt, but religion discovered it millennia ago.

Religion uses abstractions such as emptiness and the ground of being and ultimate reality and absolute truth, but that is because it mainly has the mind to work with; it puts the mind on a pedestal, however much it may also emphasise the limitations of the mind. 

 

For the indigenous mind, what is ultimate, what is most real is Mother Earth. This does not even need saying, for how could it be otherwise? 'Ultimate reality', 'God' is in front of our noses, every day, in everything we do. She is the air we breathe, the rain that refreshes, the Sun that warms and gives life, and the soil that supports and nourishes. There are no abstractions.

This can appear 'primitive' to the modern mind, which is used to the complex abstractions of philosophy and science - which are beyond the understanding of most of us - to describe the nature of the universe. We have been brainwashed, our minds have been colonised by a system that wishes us to see only a tiny sliver of reality and to look down on what is in front of our noses. 

 

You don't need to be a conspiracist to see this. Conspiracy misses the point, however, for it attributes our brainwashing to a shadowy and deliberate plot. Make no mistake, it is something we all collude in, it is collectively generated and perpetuated. The forms of the brainwashing may shift, but the frail human need for simple certainties persists. As TS Eliot said, 'Humankind cannot bear very much reality.' Or as the Buddha didn't say, 'All worldlings are mad.'

 

At least in a tribal situation, you have small enough numbers that those with a bit of wisdom can have some influence, and not let the simplistic certainties - which remember many people actually need - predominate. But in a society of millions, the sheer collective pressure seems to squeeze out much room for people with a bit of wisdom - or people who will listen to it - at the top. (In my opinion, Prince Charles has room for it.)

 

Real knowledge is simple to find. It is in our minds as they are right now, and it is in the elements around us. The Fool is simple enough to understand this, the professor generally is not. It is simple, but it is not easy.