AI MEDICINE WHEEL SONNET and a WOLF VISITATION

My nephew, who has read my Medicine Wheel book, went to chatgpt yesterday and instructed it to write a sonnet about the medicine wheel. This was what came back:

In the Medicine Wheel, the

sacred circle stands

A symbol of balance, harmony,

and growth

Four quarters represent the four

sacred lands

Where all life's aspects find their

perfect home

The east is where the dawn

breaks, fresh and new

The south is where the sun is at

its peak

The west is where the day begins

to cool

The north is where the wisdom

lies, unique

But the centre is the heart of all

that's known

A place of unity, a sacred space

where all the elements and

forces are shown

To bring about a sense of love

and grace

The Medicine Wheel teaches us

to see

the balance that exists within all

beings

Meanwhile my niece used my FB profile pic to generate a picture of me in wolf form. This was because she has never forgotten the time, maybe 20 years ago, when we visited Longleat Safari Park. We were in 2 cars, and the wolves gathered around the car I was in and stared in at me. She didn't know that it was a wolf who turned up 18 months ago and suggested I write a fantasy novel about shapeshifters, something I thought was beyond me. And still do sometimes, 140k words later😊

SHAMANISM AND THE WORLD 100 YEARS FROM NOW

One day I think we will look back at our age and scratch our heads. We had never had it so good, and yet so many of us were filled with gloom that humanity was driving itself to extinction, along with most of the rest of the life on the planet. The shrill cheerleader of this collective fear – the pony-girl of the apocalypse - being a naïve teenage girl, honoured by many world leaders. We were fuelled by news reports that proclaimed the most alarmist speculations of ‘experts’ as gospel truth. News was never reported, as ever, unless it was bad news. What had the western world come to?

This apocalyptic thinking was nothing new. There had previously been fears of extinction from over-population, and then from nuclear war: the only discernible outcome of the nuclear threat was the end to all major wars. Perhaps the root of it all was an existential insecurity arising from the loss of our old moorings in Christianity, so starkly proclaimed by Nietzsche when he wrote that “God is Dead.” And the fact that humanity was going through a huge transition: people do not feel comfortable with change.

Meanwhile, the actual course of humanity was to continue to raise unprecedented numbers of people out of poverty, driven by a combination of the capitalist economic system, technological inventiveness and the consumption of fossil fuels, followed by the eventual shift to nuclear power. Alongside came an unprecedented flourishing of the natural world, due to the higher CO2 levels. Vast areas were allowed to become wild again, as humanity became more efficient at producing food for itself. The world population eventually levelled off as middle-class living standards became the norm. Many species did indeed become extinct along the way, but eventually a new balance was found as humanity completed its transition to a largely urban dwelling, technologically-based, culturally ever-renewing species. New certainties arose, limited as any certainty necessarily is, but enough to allay the existential fears of much of collective humanity.

Meanwhile the individual was left, as they always had been, with their own solitary self to deal with, and the option to project their own darkness onto the world, with which they would find a ready demographic of concurrence in the social media.

 

This is where our Shamanism will find itself. You can forget about a return to the old utopia, the ‘participation mystique’, that we project onto indigenous peoples. Our job is to keep clawing back that sense of belonging to the natural world which, if there is an absolute truth, is that. And the sense of it in an urban environment, which is where most of us in the West now live. And maybe the breaking down of the distinction between human-made and ‘natural’, as if the human ability to invent were somehow not natural. Don’t perpetuate the split that Christianity gave us into godly and worldly, that we may carry forward into ‘natural’ and ‘unnatural’. The urban environment as inspirited. Maybe that is our job. But we need to feel it first. And that comes through treating it as alive. Give thanks to your car, your frying pan, your phone. Trust that Mother Earth knows what she is doing.

SHAMANISM, CAPITALISM and IMAGINARY SPIRIT WORK

Even though this blog is 'Shamanic', I have an ongoing thing about whether I even want to use the word 'Shamanism'. Maybe that is as it should be. Maybe it means I am thoughtful 😂

But seriously, most Shamanism is religion, just like any other path is mostly religion: ie there is a hierarchy, and people take their guidance primarily from that, although that is hard for individuals to admit to. It is the human condition, it is not a complaint, and it is where many of us need to start. I will complain, however, about Shamanism being effectively reduced to a method, which is what 'core' Shamanism does. I don't know why, but it makes me see plastic, masquerading as the real thing.

But this isn't my main point. What I am wanting to bang on about is the indigenous people = good, modern humans = bad attitude, which is just one of the prejudices we may bring to Shamanism. Along with the anti-establishment, anti-capitalist, anti-technology, apocalyptic environmentalist attitude, with ourselves as the good guys. We can in this context claim to be virtuous, not because of anything we do - apart from maybe the odd soul retrieval, imaginary or otherwise - but because of our identification with who we imagine to be the good guys.

Let me digress and say something I have never seen said before: I think a lot of our spirit work is imaginary. There, I have said it. Of course 'clients' (ghastly word) feel good afterwards, that is not hard to achieve. But has anything real shifted? Hard to say. Sometimes. Often not. Your pedestal often gives the illusion of it. There is real power in this work if we have the gifts for it, and the training too. It is a long, slow path, and we need to keep the faith in it, and it is our own Spirits that fundamentally keep the whole thing rolling along. Indigenous people understand the slow and deep nature of this path, our culture does not.

So the idea that indigenous = good, modern = bad. Not so. Humanity is on a hell of a technological roller-coaster ride, which I find myself marvelling at, in the context of vast collectives, and early peoples simply did not have any of this. Their example can help us remember that we belong to the natural world, and to continually give thanks for what we have. Modern westerners would do well to remember what our system gives us, instead of damning it, which is the tendency of the counter-culture. Dostoevsky identified lack of gratitude as the root of evil. I think he was right. Our counter-culture, which Shamanism tends to nest itself in, easily damns and feels superior to this culture, this system, that has given us so much.

There is no point fighting against where humanity is going. It is high tech, it is vast collectives, it is fossil fuels for now. Fossil fuels, that continue to help raise so many millions of people out of poverty. Why are these things often not seen as part of the natural world? What are they, if not that? Is not an iphone or an electric car also part of the natural world, something we can wonder at and feel grateful for and treat as having its own spirit, which I am sure they do?

So yes, Shamanism reminds us of certain basic attitudes that we need, and that we can easily forget. That humans have always easily forgotten. Hence ceremonies in which people give thanks and make prayers: because we forget to do so in the busyness of everyday life. That alienation is nothing new. And the cure is, in a way, simple.

So this, I think, is what our Shamanism, which is an ongoing re-invention, needs to be: an embracing of where humanity is going, working with our collectives rather than in opposition to them (and traditional shamans would have worked with, not against, their political leaders), while remembering our belonging to an inspirited natural world.

And one last thing: capitalism is just what humans do. We have always traded and attempted to build prosperity. It is stupid, it is anti-human nature to oppose it, and to use 'capitalist' as a term to damn people. Capitalism needs managing, definitely, for it tends towards amorality. But we are Shamanic, are we not, we are attempting to align ourselves with what is natural to humans, that which makes humans flourish and prosper? Should we not, therefore, align ourselves with the spirit of prosperity which is at the root of capitalism? Should we not align ourselves with the establishment, with our political leaders, whoever they might be, and bring our values to that table, instead of placing ourselves apart and above, which I do not think is an honest or effective place to be? I think that oppositional, superior attitude, which is so common, which becomes an accepted reality in many shamanic groups, is a kind of spiritual bypass.

 

The image is of the Shaman as Magician, who re-creates the world not through opposition, but by bringing the elements of Fire, Water, Earth and Air together. Just as the Medicine Wheel also does.

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SCIENCE AND CONSCIOUSNESS

This is worth watching. Two points that were not made:

Can consciousness be investigated as an object of scientific inquiry, or is it by definition subject, and therefore not amenable to that particular way of knowing? I see matter and consciousness as the outer and inner, objective and subjective, poles of the one reality.

Then there is the question of whether matter is conscious. I like to argue that the onus is on science to prove that matter is not conscious. Why would matter not have an inward dimension, just as we do?

BALANCING HEAVEN AND EARTH

I am reading these memoirs of a singular Jungian analyst. There is much food for thought. Johnson is by temperament introverted and solitary, and it draws me into that emphasis in myself. The Hermit archetype, which is full of the inner joy to be found when we let the world recede and honour the abundance within. Out of that I do my best work, which mainly takes the form of astrology readings by zoom, but which is a vehicle for whatever is needed.

For me, the overlap between Jung and Shamanism is seamless. I don't feel any limits or dogmas around Jung's spirit, and Shamanism at its best also has that quality: it is simply the human living in alignment with the spirit of the natural world, which is infinite. Jung knew one or two indigenous elders, and there was an easy understanding between them.

As a young man, Johnson was fortunate enough to meet Jung. He'd had a dream, which he related to Mrs Jung, and she passed it on to Carl. It was a huge lengthy dream involving Buddhas and snakes. Jung laid out Johnson's life before him. Do not join anything. Never marry. Your life is an inner life, and the world may never acknowledge you. That does not matter. What matters is that you commit yourself to that inner life and work.

As it happens, the world did acknowledge him. His books such as He, and Lying with the Heavenly Woman, became bestsellers (I recommend them.) And Jung was spot on. It reminds me of the traditional idea where a young man goes out on a vision quest, has a vision which reveals the course of his life, and an elder interprets it for him.

Never join anything was one of the injunctions. Out of his longing for community, Johnson tried a number of times to join institutions. He even became a monk at one point. It never worked out, and he knew beforehand that it was wrong for him. But still he went ahead. How many times has each of us done just that, one way or another?

Jolande Jacobi founded the CG Jung Institute in Zurich. Jung was resigned to its inevitability, but refused to set foot in it. Groups of people always mess up and dogmatise and literalise the teachings, and put the teacher on a pedestal. Not to speak of the interpersonal politics that arise.

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This has been a theme for me for years. I feel that the universe keeps shoving me away from groups, but still I footle around the edges. I may even try to change them. It always ends in tears. There is usually some kind of falling out because I feel constrained by the unspoken rules and hierarchy, and I say something. That need for community has also driven me to allow people to become close to me who are inauthentic in some way, have an agenda. And I can be naïve enough to try to address it with them.

I am trying now to quietly leave religious groupings – and indeed, the world itself - to their own devices. There is an inevitability to the way they are, and they serve a function. Where does that leave me? I have published a book, The Medicine Wheel. It is full of ideas that are worth chewing on, though I say so myself. But to set up a group based around the things I have to say? I recoil at that.

Many of those who wanted to stay in such a group would be doing so on the basis of aligning themselves with my ideas, with various degrees of dogmatism, depending on their (unacknowledged) need for authority. Now there’s nothing wrong with my ideas, I think many of them are pretty good. But my job is to help people align with their own inner guidance, not mine. That is all that real teaching ever is. But the difference is not clear to most members of spiritual groupings. Of course they think their understanding is their own. But it’s not, it’s the teacher’s. If you are outside the group, you can see that.

It's like received opinion everywhere. It’s what makes the world go round. You hear one opinion from someone, and you can usually guess the next dozen. And there’s usually very little point arguing with it, even though I do, because people get their identity from belonging to some sort of ‘right-thinking’ demographic. Here’s a thing, based on my observation: nearly everyone believes what they want to believe about just about everything, and evidence to the contrary makes very little difference. It is almost the human condition itself. As Blake said, “A man convinced against his will, retains the same opinion still.” This is the North of the Medicine Wheel, the Mind, and it comes last because it is so difficult for people. The ‘wanting’ to believe comes from the opposite point, the South, Emotion, and the North can help bring awareness to that.

So I am much more inclined to go for individual interactions. With the best will in the world, a grouping develops a collective mind of its own, with its own unspoken rules of engagement. We all get drawn into that to some extent when we join or when we lead. I am not saying useful stuff does not happen in that context. It is often the first stage for people, and it may go on for years. It certainly did for myself, even though I was always a bit uncomfortable, always aware that the leader needed me to surrender some of my autonomy, though they would never have acknowledged that. Group leaders are usually very unaware of the real nature of their relationship with their students. That is quite a thing to say, but I think it is nevertheless true.

That is not what I am about. The people running such groupings usually have some kind of ambition for themselves (NOT always!) They don’t seem to see anything wrong with that. I have been unfriended and blocked by teachers over this issue. One guy even claimed that personal ambition was validated by the indigenous Mexicans he hangs out with. It that is truly the case, then that indigenous tradition has become degenerate. It is a fundamental issue, and a good teacher will hold you back and help you unravel those different motivations, which I think we all have. I have had the personal ambition painfully pummelled out of me, incrementally, over the last 30 years. The more I move away from the ego paradigm, the more Spirit has the opportunity to send my way the people I can be of use to, which is by no means everyone.

I am moving to this deep place where I sit quietly and let Spirit call the shots. I love it. It is such a relief. You have probably seen this process in me, as I have been writing on this theme, on and off, for years now. Yes, I will talk about my book with people if they want to, I am very happy to. But purely from the angle of how it helps them align with who they are. That mysterious journey, that just gets more mysterious as we get older. This is Robert Johnson’s approach, coming out of his commitment to his inner life. It has been a welcome reminder.