ON NOT TEACHING

Sure, do the odd bits of healing and readings for people. It is good service that helps. But don't even think about being a teacher until you are in your 60s or, better, 70s. There are things to know first that you cannot even imagine, slow and radical transformations that you need to live through. 

 

Our youth culture does not understand this. We have lost our roots in tradition, and that brings certain freedoms. But it also makes us superficial, and we no longer know this. Involvement with indigenous peoples is not a sexy substitute for this sheer prolonged exposure to life and it's vicissitudes. From what I understand, people are not considered to be elders in traditional societies till they are in their 70s or 80s. Then they may have some real wisdom.

NIGHT EAGLE

I began writing the 3rd volume of my Shapeshifters trilogy this morning. It is surprising me already. I sometimes weep when I write: the themes touch me deeply in ways I don't understand. I finished the 2nd volume last week. Writing requires solitude, we are living from deep inner connections. Then the book comes to an end, the inner connections fade, and the everyday solitude becomes oppressive, a disconnection. And I begin to flail.

So this morning came as a relief. The opening image was pressing on me, making me weep, so down it went, and it unfolded. Here is what I wrote:

The Eagle flew through the night, heading north-west. Hour after hour in the freezing remoteness of Earth’s upper reaches, mighty wings grasping a fierce purchase in the scant atmosphere.

In his solitude he felt keenly the presence of the stars, their myriad tribes shining down with an intensity virtually unhindered at this altitude, each constellation seemingly with a quality and story of its own.

Or so reflected Queen Elfina. This was her first experience of Shifting fully and physically into the Eagle. For the first couple of hours this kind of reflection had not been possible. The initial downward sweeps of the Eagle’s wings had flung her out of herself and into her distantly remembered home, the entire cosmos.

And there she had stayed, unformed, blissfully at one with the vast ocean, the Eagle a flickering point of connection, a wave on the surface.

SHAMANISM ANCIENT AND MODERN

I’m thinking out loud. Is this Shamanism thing that we have embarked upon purely about reclaiming indigenous consciousness, and finding a way of living that in the modern world? Or are there new elements of consciousness that we moderns bring to the table, that need to be integrated with that indigeneity? Is human consciousness changing, or is it perennial, with adaptation needed to modern ways?

I haven’t got any answers. It is just something that I sit with from time to time. I wonder about individual consciousness and group consciousness, and whether there is more room for individual consciousness in our type of society. And I wonder about creativity: we live in a ferment of it, technologically, artistically and metaphysically. In a traditional society, the emphasis is on – well, tradition, and knowing that deeply. That has its own strengths. But we have access to so many different ways of seeing the world, that our relativism can open us up to.

 

In his book Coyote Medicine, Lewis Mehl Madrona says that post-modernism, with its lack of absolute certainties, is hard for most people to live with - unless they are shamans, who get their power from this alignment with the flow of Spirit. And at the same time he says that, in his experience, most tribal people have a fairly simple set of certainties and beliefs by which they live. And he quotes another elder who said that to the effect that all creation stories are provisional, really we don't know how everything came to be.

I think it is the same in the modern world: most of us want a fairly simple set of certainties to live by. Science provides them: the Universe began with the Big Bang; Life arose through Evolution, driven by natural selection; and when we die, there is extinction. We know where we stand. Quantum Mechanics, that brings consciousness and uncertainty into the equation, is too subtle ever to catch on in the mainstream.

So modern people are the same in that kind of way. Most people want simple certainties and do not have a burning metaphysical quest, though they may wake up to that during the course of their lives, you never know.

The sheer size of our societies allows for the creative ferment, and an escape from what can become a cage of just one way of seeing the world (which suits many people.) From the viewpoint of the individual, that is a very good thing. From the point of view of the group, I think it is more difficult, because in our large societies we are collectively governed by impersonal rules rather than relationships. I think that has an alienating effect for many. I’m not sure there is any obvious way round this. It causes many people to react blindly to the authority of these rules, as though they are being oppressed by a ‘them’, and they think they are demonstrating their individuality by standing up to it. In fact, these rules – or laws – have usually been worked through and refined in practice over time, there is intelligence behind them.

I think our large societies create divisions between people purely because of their size and the impersonality that comes with that. It takes an effort of imagination not to slip into those divisions.

 Then there are the teachings themselves, our Medicine Wheels and Shamanic Journeyings and Sweatlodges and other Ceremonies. We can never be part of the traditions from which they came, though we can be inspired by them and learn from them. That frees us to concentrate on what it is in those practices or ceremonies that works, and to re-invent as we need to, based on having connected to them deeply in our own experience: that takes time. We can be in a hurry and not realise the depth of things. 

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I offer Zoom astrology readings, by donation. Contact: BWGoddard1 (at)aol.co.uk. My books, Surfing The Galactic Highways and The Medicine Wheel are available for pre-order on Amazon (or by post from me now.)

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 Given that, we are not beholden to tradition, there is no penalty for re-inventing and going our own way. This is another aspect of the creativity that I think is possible in our modern culture. Indigenous cultures are characterised by the preservation of what has come before, and slow adaptation to changing circumstances. They perhaps understand the collective aspect of consciousness better than we do, that it isn’t just a mob thing, but something that can be supportive and heightening, particularly in Ceremony. But we moderns don’t have to hold our creativity at bay in the interests of the continuity of tradition, because we have no tradition. There is a way we can be very alive by being true to the new ways that Spirit, which is unfailingly creative, is always showing us. Maybe this is something new that the ancients did not have.

Last year I wrote a book on the Medicine Wheel. I have no traditional training in it. Just a course or two with someone who wasn’t traditionally trained either. I wrote about it from the point of view of the sense I had made of it myself, in my own lived experience. I claimed the freedom to do that, I made it clear it was not a traditional exposition, I made plenty of my own additions, and drew in references from our own culture. That said, it wasn’t as simple as it sounds. I had had 40 years of being on a transformational path before I wrote the book, which I meant that I knew what I was talking about, experientially. That is one of the book’s strengths. And on that basis, I re-invented the Medicine Wheel.

I am attempting a bit of that with shamanic journeying at the moment: I am about to run an event in Wales on Embodying the Spirits, and I want to take it right back to my own experience. Put aside the words I have learnt like soul retrieval and de-possession and just do the work, and find out a few weeks later what it was that I did. So again, I am attempting to re-invent. I think a live tradition is always being re-invented, it is ever fresh in that way, and the re-invention emerges naturally from being true to one’s own experience. It is not a superficial thing, I think it takes years to be ready to do that. But nevertheless, we have that creative possibility in our culture, that I don’t think is there to the same extent in traditional cultures.

                                     

THE NORTH OF THE MEDICINE WHEEL

The North of the Medicine Wheel that I use is also the Element of Air, the Mind. It comes last, it is the place of the Elder. And I think it comes later in life because it is the hardest Element to live from in a balanced way. It is easy to live from in an unbalanced way: it is just the mind spouting forth the received opinions it thinks are its own, fuelled by the unexamined emotions of the South, so much froth on the tips of the waves. 

 These opinions tend to be polarised into 'for' this and 'against' that. This is the real matrix. It seems like reality, whichever side you are on. But it closes us down to the vastness of things. Which is why we do it.

The Elder performs a harmonising role in the community by appreciating all sides. It is a place of disinterest, which allows for truthfulness. She no longer needs to rest on this opinion or that opinion to know who she is. She knows she is the whole universe.

ON THE RUN IN SIBERIA

Rane Willerslev was a young anthropologist doing field work in eastern Siberia soon after the collapse of Communism. The people were the Yukhagir, who are few in number, and hunt and live in ways that are still quite traditional. Their main source of income is the sable, which was at the time being bought up by a state corporation at a very low price. Willerslev decided to help the Yukhagir by selling direct to Europe. The corporation did not like this, murdered his business partner, and arranged to have him arrested. So he had to go on the run in the wilderness for 18 months, and live by hunting with the Yukhagir.

This book is very readable, with well-described characters. Importantly, it brings us into an indigenous way of seeing the world. There is one incident where the hunter is dressed in elk furs, and a female elk and calf are approaching him. What he sees are a young woman and child dancing towards him, beckoning him to go with them. At that point he shot them both. He said that if he had gone with them, they would have killed him.

 

For the Yukhagirs, animals are persons like ourselves and have our attributes. As he becomes part of their lives, the author starts to experience the world as the Yukhagir do. He starts to accurately dream the animals he will kill the next day. There is a tree covered in all sorts of offerings. An old woman says it is her spirit counterpart, and if she is getting ill, she asks the tree to get ill for her. The tree is old and falling down. The woman says that when the tree falls, she will die.

 

Willerslev was brought up by his parents to base his life firmly on reason. He began his research on that basis. His time among the Yukhagir changed that. He says that if he had put reason first, he would not have survived. For indigenous people, the visionary/spirit dimension comes first.

 

In Beyond Nature and Culture, Philippe Descola suggests this is a common experience among anthropologists: they do some field work as young researchers with an indigenous people, and their way of being in the world has a profound effect on them. They spend many years afterwards reflecting on this different way of seeing the world. Descola's early experience was with the Achuar in the Amazon. I read his account of that time, The Spears of Twilight (recommended), many years ago. On the Run in Siberia is vividly written and will give you a taste of one of those worlds. Best buy is secondhand from abebooks.

SOUL-LOSS, DEATH AND THE DREAMING

Maybe there are many different planets we could have been born on. They are probably not the discrete places we think. The Earth is the dreaming that we live in for now. This resistant material reality, that appears so fixed and external to ourselves, is fluid, it is dreamed. It is a flux of overlapping dreamings. It is mysterious and unknowable. Science can only ever give us a very thin slice of reality, on a 'let's pretend' principle that the universe is real and external to ourselves.

Maybe there are different planets according to the different dreamings that they are expressions of. This planet is not an easy one. It seems to me that we are here not so much to be happy, as to learn stuff and transform. Otherwise why do so many of us seem to spend our lives recovering from our childhoods, like something went wrong and, so it can seem, our real life will begin once we have sorted it all out?

I'm not saying that things don't actually go wrong in childhood, it is horrendous for some people. But it can also give us something to struggle with, that may take most of our lives, and it makes us who we are. It is a warrior thing. We are here to struggle to become who we are, and life will present the discomforts that can push us to do that, if we choose. Or we can self-medicate, as it's called nowadays.

Whether people make that choice, and to what degree, is a mysterious thing. Our job can be to help people make that choice more deeply, but we can't do it for them. So you're ill? Do you really want to get well? Why? What is it that gives your life meaning?

'Soul retrieval', as we have come to call it, is something that people usually do for themselves. It is not just about bringing back bits that went missing in childhood. A load of other stuff comes with it. It is about the next stage in our overall unfoldment too. From this point of view, soul loss can serve a purpose, it can be a necessary thing, giving us something much greater than we would have had when it eventually returns, and giving us something to struggle with along the way.

I'd much rather spend time getting to know people and in some way help facilitate them finding their own bits of soul, than engage in what I reckon can sometimes be a fantasy that we, or the spirits, are doing it for them. Sure, we can nudge things along, it's a beautiful and mysterious thing when we do, it's part of our job description. But I think our bigger job is being part of, and witnessing, their lives over a longer period, and providing that reminder of, and connection to Spirit, when needed.

 

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I offer Zoom astrology readings, by donation. Contact: BWGoddard1 (at)aol.co.uk. My books, The Medicine Wheel and Surfing The Galactic Highways, are available for pre-order on Amazon (or by post from me now.) You can also find me at www.astrotabletalk.blogspot.co.uk and www.shamanicfreestate.blogspot.co.uk

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Maybe the most important part of the service we provide is like an initiation, it is energetic. Something of who we are rubs off on the other person, our connection to Spirit opens up a deeper connection in them, just by them being around us and paying attention. It changes us, too.

I think it can sometimes feel like we've bitten off more than we can chew in this lifetime. Maybe some of us have. I think there has to have been an element of choice, conscious or unconscious, in the lives we were born into. Maybe we just went with what felt familiar, which is often how life itself gets lived. Whether it was that New Age 'contract', where you almost sign on the dotted line with your spirit guides, is another matter. But there is a point in that, it can give a perspective on our difficulties and struggles as something we signed up to, in order to learn from.

Death. We are only here for a short period. As we approach death – in the sense that we may only have 20 or 30 years left – I think the dream-like nature of this existence starts to become clearer. Those things that seemed so important to us when we were younger no longer have the same hold over us. Death can need to be unreal when we are younger, for the living of our naïve dreams is often predicated on that.

What happens when those youthful dreams have been lived, what gives our life meaning now? That is almost a definition of the mid-life crisis, which can begin at any age, and go on for the rest of our lives. Maybe we will just get ill and die. Or maybe our values slowly shift. The sense of being alive is itself meaningful, and maybe that is how it ends up. There is nothing to be deliberately achieved, just life to be a part of.

But that doesn’t mean there won’t still be struggles. In a sense, more can be demanded of us as we age. We are hopefully more aligned, more in balance with life itself, which is a deep thing that flows through us. Life can therefore do more with us. There can be deep renewals as we age, a sense of youthfulness that we didn’t have to the same degree when we were physically youthful. We are a part of life, we do not own our lives: realising that makes things so much easier.

We still may not always be happy. But that isn’t the point. The point as we age is to stay at that coal-face of ourselves, the difficult places, that we learn from. There is a deep sense of meaning in that, beside which the pursuit of ‘happiness’ pales. And it’s not for that much longer, either. We know how quickly 20 years passes.

This earth-dreaming is a special place, where we have the opportunity to learn deeply, to transform. Maybe not all dreamings are like that, maybe some are easier, and maybe we will have earned a break for the next lifetime. But make the most of this one while you are here: stay at that meaningful, life-giving coal-face.

SHAPESHIFTING IN WALES: JUNE 22-27

I guess I'm not particularly visual, so get me journeying in the usual manner and I'm not desperately convinced by what happens, though it's real enough. Get me moving with a rattle, though, and something powerful and very nuanced happens. It immerses me. Though I usually have absolutely no words for it. And it is joyful. I guess I journey kinaesthetically; that is, it's all in my body. If I'm doing some work for someone, I'll be moving or dancing around, delicately and very precisely, speaking in syllables in no known language, but which are replete with healing intention. Or I might be standing on one leg making whistling noises. Love and tenderness for the person I am working for flows through me.

I know something of significance has occurred, but not usually much more than that. And it may be some time before the other person experiences the full outcome. With this work, if you like, we are planting seeds, making deep shifts, on the dream level, and they take time to unfold on this level. Prayers work in the same kind of way.

Anyway, allowing the spirits to embody us - which is one language for the way I work - is very traditional, and has been lost along the way for all sorts of cultural reasons. Myself and Emma Edgington will be exploring this way of working at Cae Mabon in Wales from 22-27 June. We don't quite know what we're doing, but that's maybe the best way. Details below in a previous blog if you want to come along. There are still a few places. We will have a good time.  http://shamanicfreestate.blogspot.com/2021/12/embodying-spirits.html