TWO SPIRIT and TRANSGENDER

The Native Americans understood this transgender thing through their Two Spirit traditions. You'd get eg men living their whole lives as women, because that was their calling, yet they would be buried as men. We have forgotten what it is to be called by an archetype, or rather a Spirit, which is a gift: instead we want to possess it and literalise it, and that easily turns the gift into a curse. We literalise it through surgery and hormones. We have to be one thing or the other.

 

Transwomen, as Germaine Greer dared to say, are not women. And nor are transmen men. There is a much more interesting journey to be had if we can trust nature instead of trying to 'correct' her. Nor is it indigenous to insist that others see us the way we decide, instead of the way the collective decides. The self is relational amongst indigenous people, rather than autonomous, as it is in our world. This is where we can learn from indigenous attitudes.

And here's another thing: for some people, gender is fluid. For most, it is not. Their gender is simply the biological sex they were born, and they are happy with that. This is observable, it is a pragmatic truth. Yet recently I ended up in a wrangle twice with people who wanted to insist that gender is fluid, full stop. That is ideology, it is not pragmatic, nor is it the 'progressive thinking' that they think it is. And I don't appreciate the dogmatism either. That alone makes them wrong. Gender is fluid for some people, but not for most people. If you grew up on a farm like I did, you see biologically determined behaviour first hand.

SETTLING THE MEANING OF 'SHAMANISM' ONCE AND FOR ALL?

Going to a retreat at Cae Mabon with Dr David Luke on 9th Sept. He is an academic psychedelic researcher, and below is a diagram he uses when talking about the traditional roles of the shaman. 

 As you can see, there are a lot of roles. It is not just the direct work with the spirits that the modern narrow definition of shamanism reduces it to. How could it ever have been just that? A shaman is necessarily an orchestra rather than just one instrument. You get this impression too reading Jan van Ysseltyne's book Spirits from the Edge of the World, about modern Siberian Shamans. I'd like to think this settles the debate once and for all about what shamanism is, but I'm sure it won't! 

 
Here is the event I'm going on: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/exploring-ecology-cosmos-consciousness-tickets-168428164173?fbclid=IwAR3GOtiOQxxkswCq1Z2hMf_aj7e-pxe0GD6ozBTKYm2eGgeChT2v1wTtdeE

MY BOOKS

The front covers of my books, coming out next year, published by Moon Books. The amazing artwork is by Ali Broughton.

 

GIVING THANKS VS THE APOCALYPTIC NARRATIVE

Giving thanks for all those things that are good in our lives is basic to indigenous ways of being in the world. We are wired to pay more attention to that which does not work, to that which is dangerous to life. You are here because your ancestors were on the look-out for snakes and tigers. Nowadays that translates as the only news is bad news. Good news does not get reported. It translates into the apocalyptic narrative that human activity will soon end life as we know it. And it ignores good news, such as the vast numbers of people currently coming out of poverty, or the ongoing net reforestation of the world, or that we are now overall giving land back to nature instead of taking it.

The ability to see these good things can take place when we give thanks. Indigenous people understand our human propensity to dwell on that which is not working, and to take that which is working for granted. It is urgent that we remember the hopeful trends today, when often all we can see is the apocalyptic narrative.

We all know the bad things, I am not denying them. But we do not generally know, or even have space for, the good things, so consuming is the bad news, the apocalyptic story. Here is an interview about some of the good things, based on publicly available data. It's a bit materialistic, but it makes the point. Give thanks for all these good things that modern humanity is doing. I think we're gonna make it.  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIANLddo-ec

MY WORTHY OPPONENTS

I don't know about you, but the people I've learned most from are the ones I've had to struggle against. I guess I should feel grateful, and indeed I am, but through gritted teeth. I have been pushed to claim the truth of who I am repeatedly for most of my life.

The first was my Dad, a businessman, who judged everyone by their monetary worth, and led me to feel that I could have no self-respect outside of his way of seeing the world. After that came my Buddhist teacher for 18 years, who judged everyone according to his own spiritual paradigm, and also led me to feel that I could have no self-respect outside of his way of seeing the world. Against both of these I had to believe in myself and rebel, and the emotional catch-up afterwards took some years. Using the shamanic paradigm, the spirits wanted to claim me for their own, but I did not trust them, and indeed they had to make me ill in my mid 30s for some years before I would listen. But once I did, everything began to come right.

And then the first Shamanic event I went on in 1996, a week in the wilds of Wales, the guy leading it had something new, a spirit about him that spoke deeply to me. But he was wrapped up in his own image of himself and preyed on vulnerable people, and I was old enough by then to see that pretty quickly. And then shortly after that came my first long relationship - 18 years - and like everything before it, there was something genuinely in it for me, as well as a sting. She had an unusual intuitive ability, but also a disconnect from people, and particularly from me, so that in the end I was just being used, though it took some years for me to believe that.

In the last 4 years I have for the first time been free of anyone who needed me to be something for them. I have spent most of my life around people who wanted to deal me knock-out blows, and I have kept standing up again, and that has at times been to the derision of others. But I am also (figuratively) a heavyweight boxer, and this is what that long journey has taught me. I can now stand up and punch them back just as hard. I have a confidence in who I am and in what I think that is hard-won, and I do not have the usual fears of what others may think.

It means I do not easily fit in anywhere. I certainly do not fit in with shamanism-as-religion, which will always be for the majority, for that is human nature, and something we hopefully transition away from over time. No, I trust my own connection, and I will always put that first, however indigenous and authentic the teachings that are coming my way. That is the difference between religion and spirituality: do you put your own judgement first, or that of the teacher and his/her tradition? For us shamanisers, that means indigenous teachers: can you keep your own end up around them, or do you treat them as special, as inevitably knowing more than you do?

So there is something in me that is my own, that has been hard-won over decades. It is like a clear spring that comes up from a pool as big as the universe. It is usually there when I'm doing readings or teaching. I am 63 and I feel I have the main thing to do in my life yet, based on what I have spent all my life building, without quite realising it at the time. The 2 books I wrote earlier this year - one on the Medicine Wheel, one on Astrology - will probably be some kind of springboard. I don't know what is coming next, but I have a deep sense of a powerful seed of something that I will be speaking from. That is also quite casual and natural, because that is the way I work. I shy away from being a 'name' with special abilities and powers and initiations. Yet I also know I have something real to offer that needs to be passed on. It is a matter of letting whatever it is work through me for a good while, and then moving on.

TWO-EYED SEEING and INDIGENOUS PHILOSOPHERS

Just finished a 9-week late night course with Lewis Mehl-Madrona, in which indigenous therapists from all round the world were interviewed about their work. It is the 3rd such course I have been on in the last 18 months (they started as a result of lockdown), and it really has been fascinating. We recently skipped the odd week while Lewis went off to post-lockdown Sun Dance :)

Lewis and Barbara

 

A lot of the talk was around the generations-old psycho-spiritual damage that has been done to indigenous peoples by colonisation, which is a psychological, as well as a political, term. And the ways they are developing to deal with it.

I think it can really broaden our perspective on what this shamanism thing (a word Lewis avoids) is about. To be maybe controversial (which as you know I tend to avoid 🤣), their approach is almost the opposite of our 'person walks in, you ask the spirits what to do, you do it, and send them on their way', which I have always found astonishingly superficial, though it was neverthless what I was taught in so-called 'core' shamanism. No, you need to spend the time to get to know the person deeply, you need to know their culture and history, and you need a full human relationship with them (therapists also take note.) For more on this, see Eduardo Duran's 'Healing the Soul Wound'. And 'Coyote Medicine' by Lewis Mehl-Madrona.

Anyway, for the next course (starting in September) Lewis will be inviting a range of speakers on indigenous philosophy, which for me is absolutely fascinating. The basic standpoint from which the healing work has been presented is 'Two-Eyed Seeing', which is pragmatic and of modern indigenous origin. It seeks to use what works in both modern and traditional ways, without either approach standing in judgement over the other. Philosophically, this is known as 'Explanatory Pluralism'. Our culture elevates tunnel vision, the idea that there can only be one perspective. So it is bracing for the soul :)

If you want to come on Lewis' next course - and I do recommend them as a way of broadening our vision of Shamanism - then join his mailing list here: http://www.coyoteinstitute.us/

 

 I do Astrology Readings and Shamanic Healing. But I can't predict your future or heal you. The future needs to be lived, and only we can heal ourselves. But I can usually be helpful about the way forward, and finding a better relationship with those things that bother us. On a good day I may even be able to discern a few shapes in the mists, and nudge a few things on. 

I am English so I prefer to understate myself. I am also Irish, to which I say enough of this false modesty, you're not giving the fairies the credit they deserve. They can do anything. Be that as it may, you are welcome to wander along and see me in Fore St, Moretonhampstead. BWGoddard1@aol.co.uk. Or meet me on Zoom. I work by donation, which doesn't have to be money, and can be adjourned.