SHAMANISM, PSYCHOTHERAPY and THE HORSEMAN OF THE APOCALYPSE

It is an axiom of modern psychotherapy, that who we are is to a large extent shaped by our parents and by our upbringing. It is a cause-and-effect relationship that you can spend years exploring in therapy. There is just one problem, which is that I don’t think it’s true. At least, not nearly to the extent that we are led to believe.

I first encountered this counter-notion some years ago through the Jungian psychotherapist James Hillman. He said that psychotherapy is predicated on the idea that the earlier an event occurred in life, the more deeply it has shaped us. He said maybe that is not true. More recently, I read Judith Rich Harris’ book The Nurture Assumption in which, using pre-existing research papers, she showed that parents have far less influence over who we become than is normally assumed. She is limited, though, by her own very modern assumption that who we are is determined purely by DNA and environment. In her later book No Two Alike, she ties herself in knots when trying to explain the sometimes big differences between identical twins raised in the same family.

 

As a result of these ideas, I have made a deliberate point of backing off from explanations of who I am in terms of my parents and upbringing. Sure, I can find explanations of, say, my anxiety, in terms of my father or my mother or my boarding school, all or any of these. Our minds are creative, they make up stories, and that is what these explanations are: stories. They may or may not be truly explanatory. It can be hard to know.

I think the ‘childhood shapes you’ axiom tends to confuse correlation with causation. Cause and effect is a particular explanatory approach that works well for science. But I don’t think it works so well in the much broader field of the psyche. Synchronicity is, I think, a better model. There is, maybe, a synchronicity between your parent’s marriage and the way your own relationships have turned out. It is useful to take their marriage into account, don’t get me wrong. But it needs to be held lightly. There is an essential, defining mystery to who you are in relationships that has nothing to do with your parents or anyone else.

I am not even talking about not blaming our parents for who we are. I am assuming we have gone beyond that. There is a subtler level, where just the fact of explaining who we are in terms of parental influence can still be limiting.

By relegating this childhood-as-cause axiom, we may rob ourselves of explanations of how we came to be who we are, and therapists of their livelihood. But it gives us our soul back. We are no longer the product of something external to ourselves, lost in the mists of early childhood. Our soul becomes fully our own again, demons and all.

 

Who we are is a mystery. Life needs to be lived close to that mystery, which psychological explanations can take us away from. The 7^th century Bishop Paulinus, in his attempt to convert King Edwin of Northumberland to Christianity, likened human life to a sparrow flying through the feasting hall. It was there for just a brief time. Where it flew in from, and where it would fly out to, were a mystery. Who and what we are is surrounded by mystery.

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And yes, we do have demons that turn up and torment us. Coming into relationship with them is an important part of life. It is, if you like, the central moral quest. It requires honesty and humility and the ability to bear discomfort, without reaching, too often, for the sticking plasters of alcohol, relationships, chocolate, porn or whatever it is we use. Note I say not ‘too often’: we need to be human and forgiving, as well as demanding, of ourselves.

We have, perhaps, become soft in modern life. Amongst Native Americans, the teenage boys were sent into the wilderness naked, with just a blanket, for four days, seeking a vision for their lives. (There was an Elder looking out for them, but they didn’t know that.) Contrast this attitude with some US States, where it is now illegal to let your children play outside unsupervised.

 

They also had the Sweatlodge, in which the proud young warriors were prostrated by the heat. And they had the Sundance, in which the flesh was pierced with sticks, and you danced until you tore the sticks out of your flesh. As you surrender to the suffering, so does a deeper relationship with the Spirit open up. For all its bloody and fundamentalist history, Christianity, with its image of the crucifix, spirit being nailed to matter, also understood this. There is a joy and meaning to be found in this encounter with the Spirit that goes far deeper than the contentment experienced through the satisfaction of desire. It is also the difficult but ecstatic path between the East (Spirit) and West (the Body) of the Medicine Wheel. In Astrology, it is Capricorn, the imprisonment in matter of the spirit sign of Sagittarius, as well as the traditional yearly sacrifice of the old king to ensure the fertility of the land.

We are robust, we are ‘anti-fragile’, a term that has been invented to counter our modern cosseting. It is important for our Spirit that we find what we can bear. For we have to bear a lot if we are to grow, to create that deep foundation in ourselves that only the ability to stay with our demons can create.

There is always something to bear, that is the nature of life. But it is not just about being stoic. There is insight into the nature of things to be found, as well as a creative relationship with that which troubles us.

 

A more indigenous attitude to our demons is to view them as not essential to ourselves, but as visitors belonging to the universe with which we need to come into relationship. I first encountered this approach in the work of Native American writers Lewis Mehl-Madrona (Coyote Medicine) and Jungian analyst Eduardo Duran (Healing the Soul Wound.)

Eduardo Duran works with Native Americans, for whom alcoholism is often the issue. He begins with a bit of smudge and ceremony to create the spirit context, and then asks the person to see the alcoholism as a spirit that comes to visit them, and to introduce themself to it. This simple step, he says, immediately changes their relationship with the bottle.

I have been taking this approach myself with anxiety. Certain practical money situations can make me extremely anxious, out of all proportion to even the worst possible outcomes. I have stopped trying to explain and thereby mitigate this response through examining my childhood. Ax a result, I feel I own it more now: the simple fact is that I have this response, wherever it comes from. Explanations are ideas, and as such can take me away from experience.

 

Sometimes, on my own in the evening, the anxiety can consume me. It sits there like jagged lightning in my guts. And then I remember it doesn’t have to be in control. And I begin to see it as a figure over on my right: the Horseman of the Apocalypse, a mounted guy in armour. There is humour in this – and humour helps create proportion and perspective – because it is as if the end of the world is coming, and of course it isn’t, not remotely.

Lately a teenage boy has been clambering out of his armour and off the horse, and I have been embracing him for a while. I am the father that reassures him that the world is not coming to an end. Much as he likes this, it is not his habitual way of being, and after a while he starts wanting his armour back on. So off he goes and becomes the horseman again. These things take time, and you have to leave the familiar its place. Don’t frighten the horses, as they say!

But I can feel my anxiety response slowly changing through this inner work, through encountering this spirit and becoming intimate with it. It is slowly enabling me to feel that I can stand fully upright and confident in the world in a way I have never done (not that it is obvious to most people who know me that underneath I can feel unsure of myself in this way!)

There is the well-known Leonard Cohen line, that there is a crack in everything where the light gets in. That is what these demons are: gateways to the soul. Through staying with them over time, at least occasionally, and getting to know them, not trying to reduce them to just a childhood trauma (without denying the reality of that), a mysterious alchemy gradually occurs, that enlarges us, that centres us in who, in a sense, we always were. It is not ourselves that does the changing. Who are we to know the purpose of these demons, or to judge them? They are what they are. Our job is simply to get close to them so that Spirit can do its work.

Sometimes I’m asked to do a bit of Soul Retrieval work for people. It is typically to help people address some troublesome bit of themselves, that stops their life working in a functional way. Sometimes I will say yes, if I have the feeling to do so. But it is always in the context of people becoming closer to themselves over time, and the Soul Retrieval is in order to give that process a bit of a nudge. I like to spend time getting to know the person first. I really don’t like the idea of someone turning up, me ‘fixing’ them with a Soul Retrieval, and then they go. Even two or three sessions isn’t enough. I can’t rule out that way of working very occasionally. But as a model, it is very superficial. It makes me roll my eyes. I think the major change happens through long-term relationships with people, and it is a 2 way process, both of us transform. Most Soul Retrieval, as we call it, happens spontaneously and incrementally. It is a gift from Spirit that comes from living closely to ourselves on a day-to-day basis.

LOCKDOWN SWEATLODGE, ANCESTORS & LEFT-BRAIN SHAMANISM

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 So what you do is to prepare your bathroom beforehand: light a candle, add essential oils to your bath, scatter some flower petals and call in the directions and the spirits. Focus particularly on Water and Fire. Make sure the water is sufficiently hot that you can only just get in. You will acclimatise. Lie in it and have a good time.

Having a good time when we are being 'spiritual' is an important ingredient. Otherwise a bit of us disappears into earnestness and 'respect' and what you have is religion. The difference between being serious and being earnest is that the former keeps its sense of humour.

Lean your head back and give it a good dunking under the water, though you don't need to dunk your face as well. Keep it there for a while. Repeat. Then just lie there again and let the heat do its work. Most of the stuff that had been swirling around in your head, all your everyday concerns, will gradually fall away. You will be melted out of your rational ego and into your heart and body and right-brain. What a relief!

At this point you can bring in any thanks and prayers that you have. Or maybe just sit with those deeper issues in your life. Now is not a time for working them out, but for letting your non-ordinary consciousness wash over them. This is transformative.

Health warning: if your health is OK for sweatlodges, then this should be OK too. Otherwise not. For myself, after I have been very hot for a while, my heart starts to race. That is the point at which I will leave the bath - slowly - or the sweatlodge, and only return when my heart has returned to normal.

Have you noticed that your fear of death disappears when you are in an SSC (Shamanic State of Consciousness, as Harner terms it)? Notice this in the bath. I noticed it recently after an LSD trip, confirming recent research findings that psilocybin administered to dying patients permanently reduces their anxiety about death.

And the reason for this is that it is only the ego, the left-brain (using these terms loosely) that is afraid of death. And this is because for the rational ego, physical death IS an extinction. It is for this same reason that we doubt the reality of our shamanic journeys: we are immersing ourselves in a non-rational world, and the ego maintains its sense of separate existence by doubting that world. It is therefore natural to doubt in this way (thanks to Jung for this insight.)

So in our Lockdown Sweatlodge, we are immersing ourselves in the right brain, connected, oceanic consciousness. The lack of fear of death in this consciousness suggests to me that death is simply a return to this consciousness, but with the ego absent. On my recent LSD session, I felt I was looking through the gates of death, and the same beauty and joy was there as is this world, they were the same place! 

In this SSC we can come closer to the ancestors, and particularly anyone who you were close to who has died. I think something of this experience is necessary to reclaim the ancestors and their ongoing help into our lives. Otherwise it is a belief, a 'practice', and you are heading towards religion. Even relatives who were very limited in this life will have been loosened by their experience of the death realm, and may have genuine support and guidance to offer you.

So I have talked about death and the ancestors in the context of this right-brain consciousness, but that is just because I am with those themes at present. It doesn't have to be those themes. It may not be any theme at all. You may just be digging your SSC!

Watch this TED talk (or read her book) by Jill Bolte Taylor, a brain scientist whose left-brain was disabled by a stroke.

In this context, in which we have begun with intention and calling in the spirits, we can generally trust the right-brain state that we enter. But the right-brain goes both ways: it is also at work when a mob goes crazy. Or when there is a crisis in the world, and you get an explosion of ungrounded, blaming theories for what has happened. Regardless of how much truth they contain - and I am not addressing that here - underlying them is a primal need for order and reassurance that recedes as the crisis in the world recedes.

So this is why we need a left-brain. Let us not undervalue the left-brain. Without it we could not live this life, walk our earthwalk, for we would be floating in the oceanic state that is there before and after life. And the left-brain is vital for discerning the kind of right-brain, non-rational state we are in: is it Spirit speaking through us, or is it our own prejudices, fears, aversions, anger? Or is it a mixture of both? That mixture is such a tricky one, and I think we are all prone to it. Someone with an intuitive gift will probably speak sufficient truth to be of help to others. And sometimes they will be wrong, sometimes what they say will be bollocks, not to put too fine a point on it. And this applies to everyone I know, including myself. WE ALL SOMETIMES TALK BOLLOCKS FROM THAT INTUITIVE PLACE. 

In a sense that is just as well. We take ourselves and others off their pedestals, at least to some degree, once we can discern the bits of nonsense that sometimes comes out. And that gives us actual, rather than false, power. The danger, of course, is when we believe either our own nonsense or that of others. And it's probably part of the journey for many of us. Spot yourself believing your own or others' (particularly teachers') nonsense.

In this way, using the left-brain, and developing its powers of discernment, we slowly learn to tell the difference between Spirit and Shadow. This is why the right brain needs the left brain, why oceanic consciousness needs rational consciousness.

The key quality of the rational ego is not so much logic (though most of us are less logical than we like to think, and we do need logic) as its ability to stand back disinterestedly. The characteristic of right-brain consciousness is immersion, we ARE that state, we can fully believe in it. Hence the ecstasy of Spirit, and the righteousness of rage.

What we are here to do is to learn to experience the right brain, but with awareness. We are not here to change and to purify ourselves, for that notion brings in judgment, even though that change and purification may well happen over time.  

In terms of the Medicine Wheel, we begin in the East with that initial experience of Fire/Spirit, the divine spark that begins life, and goes on its journey through the elements, round and round. Air is the final element in each cycle, and that is because it is the hardest. We move through and experience Water - Emotion - and Earth - the Body and then we reach Air, where we stand back and come to know Fire, Water and Earth. This is what it has all been leading up to. 

I think we often distrust the Air element because for us it is associated with the wounding of excessive rationality. But the true disinterestedness of the Air element is involved with, immersed in experience, rather than detached from, alienated from experience.

FASTING, SOPHIA, PURIFICATION and ROLLING THUNDER

I’ve been doing a fair bit of fasting over the last 6 months, and I find that on the second day I enter a different state – slower, more thoughtful, clearer and closer to who I am in Spirit. It is a very good place to be, but not if you want to get a lot done – probably best kept to weekends! And I think once you have done it a few times, you get the trick of turning feelings of hunger, which can be painful, into a feeling of giving your stomach a rest and entering some other deep process. There is a quietly joyful aspect to it. It seems to be good for both mental and physical health.

At present I am living with what one might call an archetype – Sophia – a feminine presence that apparently comes to some men as they get a bit older: she has a power and wisdom that come from the earth. (I think we are all both genders, or neither, and that the trans thing can miss this.) And it seems to me that the main purpose of my life for the next few years will be absorbing her to make a new basis to who I am. This is a huge and welcome task, I have been given a great gift. The purpose of my life is not to save the world, nor even to be of help to others, but rather to co-operate with the mysterious unfolding of my spirit. I think that always was the purpose, though I didn’t know it. But it ties in with the traditional perspective that our primary task is to take care of that deep thing in ourselves. That can seem selfish, but it isn’t. It is grounded and sane. And the fasting brings me closer to her.

I’m reading a book about the Native American Medicine Man Rolling Thunder, by Doug Boyd. It’s a great book full of down to earth teaching set in the context of the author’s experiences with him. If you look up Rolling Thunder you will find him on the new age fraud and plastic shaman sites. That to me can be a recommendation, for these sites are often set up by fundamentalist Native Americans who do not want to share the teachings. They are mean-minded and will scream cultural appropriation at anyone who shares the teachings. Well Rolling Thunder does share, and I don’t know what a fraud is technically, all I know is that he talks a lot of sense, and that is good enough for me.

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I offer Shamanic consultations, usually by skype, in which we can talk over anything you want to talk over. I may use the Medicine Wheel, Journeying, Astrology, Tarot or anything that works. And it centres around listening to ourselves in a deep way. I work on a donation basis, and I am happy with whatever is easy for you: I love this work. Contact: BWGoddard1@aol.co.uk

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So anyway, here he is talking about purification, which I realised fasting is a form of (they are all about to head off to some hot springs at night as a purification ceremony):

“The beginning is purification., that’s the first step. That’s a big step and it’s serious business. There’s a right way to do everything, and there’s a right way of purification. It’s completely natural, I’ll tell you that much. There’s nothing artificial. And purification means purification of body and mind. You don’t purify the body without cleansing the mind, that’s the way it works.

Maybe someday there will be a purification centre up in those hills. Below there might be a camp, or a meeting lodge. There could be study and teaching and fun, too. People could have discussions and talk and think about things. But when a person walks up that path for purification, everything but the person will be left behind. There will be no books or radios or any connection with the outside world. People will leave their clothes behind, too. The clothes will be waiting for them when they get back, but they’ll use buckskins and all the necessary and natural means will be provided for cleansing the body and purifying the mind. So people can leave their opinions behind with their toothbrushes.

In the old days when all our people lived by the tradition, and purification was practised by everyone, we had many means such as sweat lodges and herbal medicines and special rituals. Different people had different methods, but many things were common knowledge that are mostly unknown today. Things that are meant for a good purpose can also be used for a bad purpose; and many of those things, if they were known today, would be used in a wrong way…

People have to be responsible for their thoughts, so they have to learn to control them. It may not be easy, but it can be done. First of all, if we don’t want to think certain things we don’t say them. We don’t have to eat everything we see, and we don’t have to say everything we think. So we begin by watching our words and speaking with good purpose only. There are times when we must have clear and pure minds with no unwanted thoughts and we have to train and prepare steadily for those times until we are ready. We don’t have to say or think what we don’t wish to. We have a choice in those things, and we have to realize that and practice making that choice. There is no use condemning yourself for the thoughts and ideas and dreams that come into your mind.; so there’s no use arguing with yourself or fighting your thoughts. Just realize that you can think what you choose. If they keep coming into your head, just let them alone and say ‘I don’t choose to have such thoughts’ and they will soon go away. If you keep a steady determination and stick with that purpose you will know how to use that choice and control your consciousness so unwanted thoughts don’t come to you anymore. Then you can experience purification completely and in the right way and no impurities can exist in your mind or body at any time.”

SOUL RETRIEVAL: TO DO OR NOT TO DO?

The big question for me is whether it is best to do Soul Retrievals for other people, or help them to do it themselves. And I'm coming down on the side of helping others find their way themselves. Then they keep the power in the relationship and in the process, and they learn something. And if it takes months or longer, that is fine. There is no hurry. This is a slow-burn path.

And what is maybe sometimes missing in our culture is the place of prayer and ceremony also. And that leads on to the part that community can play, maybe needs to play, in healing. Imagine how much more powerful a healing is, if you have a load of people praying for your well-being at the same time as the shaman-guy is doing her wizardry. That is how Sweatlodges often work. Traditionally, you don’t do them just because it is Sunday or whatever, it is for a specific reason, like someone needs healing.

I used to do Soul Retrievals and other Shamanic bits and pieces up until the early noughties, and they were effective. But then people stopped coming, completely. Apart from once a few years ago, someone I knew had been sectioned, I turned up at their request and my helper put them back in their body, and a few days later they were released.

The stoppage wasn't personal, because people were turning up for astrology readings, where my primary function seems to be able to help people through transitions, how to BE in those confusing times where your old life doesn’t work anymore and you think maybe you’re going nuts. Which maybe you are, from a conventional point of view – rather like in American Beauty – but from a real point of view, you’re getting sane at last.

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I offer Shamanic consultations, usually by skype, in which we can talk over anything you want to talk over. I may use the Medicine Wheel, Journeying, Astrology, Tarot or anything that works. And it centres around listening to ourselves in a deep way. I work on a donation basis, and I am happy with whatever is easy for you: I love this work. Contact: BWGoddard1@aol.co.uk

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Anyway, it was energetic - something in me switched off, and has remained switched off, even though I have changed considerably in the meantime. However, if I have led people on their own healing journeys, great things have happened. And that can be through formal journeying, or just talking, and maybe using the directions/elements of the Medicine Wheel ceremonially as places to talk from.

So for me it's been a big message from Spirit not to do Soul Retrievals. (I’m not legislating for others here!) My early experience of journeying in 1997 was of my soul being 'retrieved', or uncovered, spontaneously, with plenty of dismemberment and reconstituting, and it changed me deeply in a short period. So I was doing it myself, in conjunction with the Spirits/the forces of the Unconscious. Even though the guy teaching me this ‘core shamanism’ tried to discount my experience, saying that others had to do it for you. Cojones! But these early experiences are formative, and if someone representing a tradition tells you something at that point, it can take years to fully convince yourself otherwise.

What comes into consciousness in Soul Retrieval isn't necessarily just missing, or repressed, pieces of soul that should never have gone missing. It can also be tied up with the stage we have reached as a human being, it can be also about a further stage of consciousness emerging.

A recent experience of Soul Retrieval was massive for me. This was last June, and it was after 2 Sweatlodges in one weekend. Sweatlodges are often a catalyst for me. I experienced an accession of a feminine side to myself, and it’s probably partly an age thing. I am still processing it 7 months on, in fact it will take years to unfold.

But one of my reflections is that part of it has been yes, stuff to do with childhood, where there was no room to be anything but a one-sided male. But another part of it has been a woman with an earth-power and the sort of wisdom that only comes with age. And who is to say that the piece that went missing in childhood wasn't also part of some necessary bigger picture? Like being part of a family line in order to bring some healing? Or having something difficult to push against?

So 'retrieval' isn't necessarily the right word. The way I was taught it had this emphasis of something having gone wrong that shouldn't have, and that being remedied. And there can obviously be truth in that, but it is also more complex. Our woundings are also a path to our soul, in a strange way we can need them to grow – the cracks where the light gets in - and it can be almost like they were planned. Sometimes. Or it may just be time for a new bit of our soul to come into consciousness, a new round of balancing on the Wheel. The ways of the Spirit, and the pattern of its unfoldment, is a mysterious and long-term thing, and it needs a big perspective.

REFLECTIONS ON THE SACRED

What do you reckon on this?

 

Uluru climbing ban: Tourists scale sacred rock for final time

Like most things, it has at least 2 sides to it, though overall they're probably right to stop people climbing Uluru. Cultural appropriation is just one side of a complex issue. Some indigenous people want to share their traditions with us uprooted secular moderns, others say that is selling out and disrepecting the traditions. I'm more in sympathy with the former, but both have a point. I think we are one world, one earth now. We have our local allegiances perhaps, but we also belong to the whole earth. I am a strong believer in letting yourself be claimed by some piece or pieces of land where you live - and it is that way round, you do not do the claiming. But you can also be claimed by a place far from home. The whole earth is our home.

And Uluru occupies an important place in our modern, perhaps 'new age', mythology, even though we may never have been there. And let us not do down the New Age too readily. Yes it can be silly, yes it can be in denial of the shadow. But it fundamentally involves a quest for meaning that is heartfelt in our muggled world. Always look to the good in what people are trying to do, it is easy to make fun and sneer.

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I offer Shamanic consultations, usually by skype, in which we can talk over anything you want to talk over. I may use the Medicine Wheel, Journeying, Astrology, Tarot or anything that works. And it centres around listening to ourselves in a deep way. I work on a donation basis, and I am happy with whatever is easy for you: I love this work. Contact: BWGoddard1@aol.co.uk

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Like in the film Dreamkeeper (recommended) where the youthful Indians encounter a young white man who deperately wants an Indian name, and they make fun of him as a 'wannabe' Indian, and the Indian elder steps in and says yes, he wants to be connected. Brilliant.

So Uluru - Ayers rock - is in our own way the sacred. The sacred is something we feel that connects us to what we feel to be most important in life, that which gives value to life. And in our utilitarian, scientific age, the sacred is easily made fun of. And those of us who seek it don't always know what we are doing, but we are having a go. And for some climbing Uluru, it is just a rock, and maybe this news item is a reminder that it is not just a rock. But for others, it is maybe their way of experiencing the sacred and they have had it taken away from them. Even though the Aboriginal traditon is not to actually climb it.  As I said, I think there are at least 2 sides to this. And indigenous people can understandably want to protect their traditions from the grasping white woman (and man - let's be gender neutral :) ) But are they also being selfish, some of them? If some white people have a genuine experience of the sacred through climbing the rock, is that something to be denied to them?

The point about Shamanism is that Sacredness is everywhere. The point about religion is that it removes sacredness to certain places and beings and makes them special, and certain people end up controlling access to those special beings and places. It is more complex than that, however. All traditions have holy people. Black Elk was a holy man. And it is right that there are such people, and it is right that there are holy places (holy=whole, that which makes us whole) such as Uluru. And it is right that we treat them as holy.

But really, they are a reminder. BLACK ELK WAS NO MORE HOLY THAN YOU OR I, the difference is that he was more awake to the sacredness of everything than you or I. That is the difference. And people or objects acquire the power to remind us of the sacred because they have been treated as such for generations. This power of the collective to imbue itself is objective, it is not just a fantasy. And it is the same with my medicine objects: it is right that I treat them in a special way, because they remind me of the sacred, they have that power within them. But their deeper message, like the message of holy people and places like Uluru, is to remind us that the sacred is everywhere, equally, if our hearts are awake to it.

What is this life if the sacred is not at the core of it? It is eviscerated, it is unthinkable from the point of view of probably every human who lived until a few thousand years ago. And yet for us it has become the norm. And there has always been that human tendency, particularly for adults who may be consumed by practical demands. And that is why there are ceremonies such as sweatlodges: to melt us out of the everyday and into our metaphysical foundation. Yes, our foundation is metaphysical or we are not properly human.

And Uluru is there also to remind us of that foundation, which is something felt, not thought. It is sacred for all of us. Whether we should be able to climb it or not - I think that is ultimately a political question. But remember that the sacred is to be found everywhere.

FOLLOW THE SWEETNESS

This morning I dreamed I was due to give a talk on ethics at a Buddhist event. Everything about it was messy, and try as I might I could not bring any order to it. I was running around looking for a text to research from, no-one would help me, I couldn’t find my room at a hotel, I didn’t have any shoes….. In my Buddhist days, which finished 20 years ago, one gave ‘talks’. And they were ordered things, with a little bit of room for spontaneity. 

Shamanism, at least what I encountered in 1996, had a very different spirit, and I drank it up. The particular bunch of people I was around had a sizeable authoritarian shadow around its spontaneity. So I took the teaching and ran! Which is what I have often recommended subsequently. Once you have ongoing groups with teachers, there will be shadow stuff, it is inevitable, don’t be disappointed. There is great teaching in that, and it is a great leveller. Sometimes it is manageable, sometimes it is best just to get the hell out. And sometimes we stay and lose a part of ourselves and then maybe years later we leave and find it, never to be lost again. There is great teaching in that too.

I was in a sweatlodge a few weeks ago, and we were having an extra round at the end when most people had left, and in which we took turns to pour a round and say a few things. And part of me, all these years later, still gets in Buddhist mode and anxious about not doing it ‘right’. Now there’s nothing wrong with a bit of planning, but keep it rooted in experience. That is the mystical path. Religion teaches from books; the mystical, esoteric path talks from experience. Esoteric means inner.

                                                    
 

So I reflected on the bees that had made their presence strongly felt at the start of the sweat, flying in and out of the lodge. And I talked about them. That is how shamanic teaching, at its best, works. You trust in what is actually happening, and bring your attention to that, and respond to that. Bees, as Eric Maddern (a seasoned practitioner of the spontaneous path) once pointed out, know their way home. They fly all over, huge distances for such a tiny being, but they know how to get back. And this is a great teaching for a sweat, because the steam and heat a melt us out of all our ideas about our lives and what we think we should be doing, and back to who we always were in our hearts, if only we can trust it. 

We can spend so many years trying to be a ‘better’ person, and ‘working’ on the bits of ourselves we disapprove of, and maybe proud of how hard we 'work' on ourselves. And then one day we realise there was never anywhere to go, nothing to disapprove of, only ourselves just to be with and be close to. And then we have ‘arrived’ and we have something to say.

And the bees of course collect nectar which is turned into honey, which is sweet. And life has its sweetness. And maybe that is how the bees find their way home, by following the sweetness! And maybe that is the best way to live: not by doing what we ‘should’ do – the ethics of my dream-talk – but by following that which makes life feel sweet.  

Many of us are afraid of bees, because they can sting. And one guy in the sweat was not afraid, and picked the bee off someone else and gently carried it out of the lodge. 

As Marianne Williamson said:  "It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us.”

We are right to be afraid, if we want to hang on to what we know and who we think we are. All that IS our life, it seems, and what could be more terrifying than losing everything we know? But it is only apparently terrifying. The sweat, and the bees, teach us the sweet way home. Pay attention to that which is sweet and live it, and it will lead you, step by step, all the way home. And be ruthless with that which is not sweet, or no longer so!