THE GLOBAL SHAMAN: A REMIT FROM SPIRIT

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Shamanism begins with the sense that we belong to the Earth, and that everything around us is alive, inspirited. For traditional people, this would not need stating, it is the air they breathe. What characterises a Shaman is their commitment to Spirit, rather than to received, collective values. The name is not a claim to special rank or powers, but to where their loyalties lie. Their path may have been arduous, for the Spirit is uncompromising when it comes calling. It often takes a crisis, when our old life no longer works, or our health fails, to persuade us to listen. It may be a long and gradual process.

Spirit is forever fresh, so that Shamans, in their listening to Spirit, in their embodiment of it, are creative people. We may work with particular spirit helpers to help and heal people, or we may have a general sense of Spirit at our shoulder, urging us on. Our principal function in the community is to stand for Spirit, to bring in Spirit, in whatever way. This keeps the people in balance: the demands of everyday, material life can seem all-consuming, but there is always room for Spirit. Spirit is the foundation, it is everything.

I think it is vital that we see ourselves in the modern West as the real deal. We are attempting to reclaim indigeneity for ourselves, through honouring the natural world and feeling ourselves to be part of it. And I think we are succeeding. There is a difficulty in what we call ourselves, because saying you are a shaman is a claim to something, and that involves ego, which separates oneself off from Spirit. This is traditional: 'Shamans' do not describe themselves as such, though others may do so on their behalf. So I think trust in this: we do not have a title, or a job description which can amount to the same thing. We just try and do a bit of helpful stuff for people.

In the modern world, Shamanism has come to mean our broad attempt to reclaim the ways in which early people related to themselves and to the world. The word has a trickster quality: it is of recent western invention, yet people argue its 'correct' meaning. It comes from the word 'shaman', whose origin in Siberia/Manchuria is debated by academics. So we can be creative with the word.

Essential to the traditional Shaman is the calling, the illness even, and there is no choice but to respond if they want to feel well and balanced again. I think it best not to set limitations as to what can come out of that. A Shaman can be a lot of things.

Today, as never before, we can have a sense that the whole Earth is our home. Shamanism is both local and global. Out of the local – our sense of a particular part of the Earth that has claimed us, our sense that it is sacred – grows a sense of the whole Earth, indeed the whole Universe, as sacred. And out of the depth of the ways and the practices and the ceremonies we engage in, comes a recognition of all indigenous ways as having a common aim, that of becoming a true human, who lives in balance with him/herself and the natural world around them.

We are heirs to all the Shamanisms around the world. We can learn from all of them. Those traditions are there to be shared. Maybe I sound like an evangelist, but what the world needs more than anything is to remember what it is to be a balanced human being, and that is to be found in the ways of early peoples. Shamanism is the remedy to the Great Forgetting, that began with farming, when people stopped trusting so much that nature would provide for them: she had to be worked. The Fall.

Particular traditions acquire depth over the thousands of years they have been developing. We can learn from that. At the same time, the vast majority of us are in a situation where there is no ancient tradition to turn to. But that is no reason for a poverty mentality. Our connection to Spirit can also be very deep. It may be hard-won over decades. Tradition often comes with a price tag, which is adherence to particular forms, and restrictions on being creative, on truly making them our own. We do not have those restrictions.

When someone has made a ceremony or a teaching their own, you can feel its heartfelt power. It may be a simple and ‘made-up’ sweatlodge, for example. But simplicity often reveals what is essential. And what is essential is the sense of the sacred, and bringing that in to this earthly reality. And that sense of the sacred deepens over time, as we continue to honour it, and deal with whatever it is in us that stands in the way of its free expression.

We are in a new age, in which the whole Earth is our home, and all peoples are faced with the same underlying issue of loss of relationship to the Earth, and the grave problems arising from that. Modern communications and media bring a vivid sense that we are all one people. As modern, global Shamans, we value all the different Shamanisms around the world and we learn from them; we also value the wonderful opportunity this gives us to keep creating something that is our own; and, I think, we can have a sense of Shamans working together globally, on the level of Spirit, to dream a new balance into humanity and its relationship to the natural world.

In case you are interested, I wrote this post for the re-naming of a Facebook Group I admin, which is now called THE GLOBAL SHAMAN.

THE COLLECTIVE SAFETY VALVE IN TIMES OF CRISIS

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I'm sitting with the idea that when you push the psyche out of balance in one direction, you get an equal and opposite reaction. So in the Middle Ages there was just this one truth called Christianity, and it was on the side of the half of the psyche called 'good'. And what you got, for the sake of balance, was this other character called the Devil, created out of psychic necessity, who didn't believe all the things he was supposed to believe, and did what he wanted and stirred up trouble. That is his appeal. 'Please allow me to introduce myself'.

We are still in a situation 1000 years later where there is only one truth, one story (this is not a natural situation for balanced human beings) and it is called Science. You then use that one and only truth to force people to stay in their houses because of an invisible enemy. There will inevitably a push from the psyche in the opposite direction.

So we have mass protests in the US and UK over a major racist incident - which completely undermine the lockdown that our collectives have forced on themselves. (This is not to trivialise the actual issue at stake: there is synchronicity at work.) And we have an explosion of theories that attribute evil to various public figures, and their alleged attempts to control the world through the deliberate creation of the invisible enemy. What you have here is unreason, the very opposite of the reason that Science uses in its one-sided, 'we are the only truth', kind of way. So in this way I see CT (Conspiracy Theory) as a sort of psychic safety-valve against this one-sidedness.  That this is connected to the lockdown is indicated by the explosion of conspiracy posts on Facebook during the most intense period of the lockdown, with a reduction in frequency of the postings as the lockdown has eased.

It is the same with round-earth and climate change: if you insist on one viewpoint too rigidly, the collective will produce equally rigid flat-earthers and climate change 'deniers'. And the more we fight them, the more they will multiply, on a sound trickster/coyote principle.

Instead, we need to look, for example, at our story that the earth is round: has anyone ever seen this? Only a few dozen people, out of billions, when they are in space. So back off, loosen up, that is what the flat-earthers are (unconsciously) telling us. And the same with the current explosion of CTs: most of us can see that reason is not on their side, but what do they tell us about the way we use reason ourselves? And, in their imaginings of evil figures who are trying to control the world, what do they tell us about the over-control in our collectives? We can always learn from these things, they are always part of the complete psychic picture, and to fight them (which I am trying not to do!) is to perpetuate that collective psychic divide.

And the attribution of evil to these public figures says to me that the Christian divide into good and evil is still alive and well amongst us, even though most of us - in the UK, at any rate - do not attend church any more. CT is a form of shadow projection. And, it is said, whatever we attribute to those projections is something to come to terms with in ourselves. Like a secret desire to rule the world! Or to be wealthy and powerful! How much of this is just envy? But also, the intensity behind these 'conspiracy' ideas points to the gap that has opened up between rich and poor in recent decades, the level of inequality. It is, I think, a mixture, as these things usually are. Envy, but also a perception that the rich-poor divide has got way out of balance. Yes, it comes out sometimes in this unreasoning 'conspiratorial' way, but it still needs listening to.

When we back off from judging ourselves - and that is no easy task - then we can be present to our whole psyche. Our judging of ourselves is often not very conscious, and we have to learn to catch ourselves doing it. All these things we feel like a 'bad' person for: not getting up early, not keeping busy, not visiting so-and-so, not being a 'good' parent, not being 'good' with money, feeling inferior generally..... We can be like one big judgment of ourselves that drives our life: it keeps us under control, which the collective wants for its sense of stability: yes it is a collective conspiracy, but an unconscious one. And it can sometimes be a relief to let others carry some of that.

But when we ease off to ourselves, be loving and sympathetic to even our judging of ourselves (and check out the above book as a guide for living this way), then we can become a whole human - not necessarily a 'good' human - but the reason we are here is to become whole, not good. And then we won't be so much part of that collective psychic division into good and bad, and we won't need to be a part of the collective psychic safety valve either, with its crazy but 'necessary' demonisations and unreasonings. And we will have a better chance of understanding the world, instead of being unconsciously swept up in it, in either direction.

Broadening the Covid Story

Lewis Mehl-Madrona is both a traditional Native American healer and a conventional doctor. What he says here in his book Coyote Wisdom has implications, I think, for our collective response to Covid, which seems to me to be binding everyone into one rigid, fear-based story, that is contradicted by the situations in eg Belarus and Japan, which have minimal or no lockdown, and miniscule deaths from Covid:

"Nature is plastic. Nature changes with us, as we change with nature. Everything is connected. Genetics changes with social interaction. Culture influences biology. Even enzyme kinetics drift with social movements. I mean to make the radical claim that there is no biology apart from culture. Our efforts to carve the world into separate academic disciplines have been futile and need to be reversed. I believe more sensitive future research will begin to reveal how cultural beliefs shape physiological responses and modulate the expression of genes, even turning some on and off. I believe we will come to see that genes are exquisitely responsive to what we do and how we live in community with others. I predict that this discovery of a new field of cultural genetics will be a hallmark of the 21st century into which we have now embarked."

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.

WHAT IS A VIRUS? THINK FAIRIES

A daimon, according to Patrick Harpur, is an entity that is both material and non-material. A fairy would be an example. Regarding viruses, he writes: "The tiny agents of disease such as bacteria and viruses are, like subatomic particles, daimonic entities whose existence was postulated hypothetically - that is, imagined - before they were 'discovered'. This is not to say that they do not exist; it is only to say that their existence is not only literal, even though we demonise them, ward them off and exorcize them in the literalised rituals we call vaccination, disinfection etc.

THE BOOK THAT GOT ME THINKING MYTHOLOGICALLY

Viruses in particular have been fashionable in recent times. They are blamed for more and more diseases whose causes are uncertain. They may be different viruses - or, more alarmingly, they may be the same viruses which have mutated. The elusive, shape-changing nature of viruses suggests they are the usual daimons. Moreover, there is a dark suspicion that the mass of 'wonder-drugs' we have invented do not necessarily cure diseases but suppress them...."

GLOBAL SHAMANISMS

Today our Shamanism needs to be global as well as local. The land we belong to is the whole earth, and we are inheritors of all the Shamanisms around the world. Humanity is one.

 

We draw inspiration from those ancient traditions, while freely creating something that is our own, that works in the world as it is now.