From my book-in-progress
Shamanic practices are not ‘tame’ or ‘safe’. They are not an add-on to a respectable urban life, where you become a ‘shamanic practitioner’ alongside being a well-boundaried therapist and respectable member of the parish council. No, they take you somewhere raw, primal, beyond the normal controlling ego.
This is on the one hand threatening, and most people will not want to go there. But it has a delicious, ambrosiacal, irresistible call too, for it is what we are here to do: to transform, and to transform deeply, and unless we can relish that call from the Otherworld, and abandon ourselves to it over many years, that deep transformation cannot occur.
It takes courage, and it takes persistence, and you may not have much obviously to show for it, and we have to learn to live with that, because it is not about that. We may appear to be some kind of ‘loser’ on the world’s terms. But really that does not matter. It is about who you are, and continually being with that on a deep level, together with its occasional periods of crisis – with or without the Sweatlodges and Vision Quests - and other people will pick up on that, they will sense that there is something about you that is deeply alluring, but they may not quite know what it is. They will recognise, however, that you are simply being yourself, you have found the courage to claim that freedom, and this is what they want too, though they may not fully know it. That is what they find appealing. By who you are, you give others the implicit permission that it is OK for them also to be who they are. This is the best kind of teaching, and it is unspoken.
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