Ask any passer-by on any street to explain shamanism and also the result might be blank stares. Many people are surprised to understand that shamanism isn’t a religion however the oldest spiritual and problem-solving technology on earth. Much more surprising may be the discovery that it is the precursor to many major world religions, like the Judaeo-Christian and Buddhist traditions, which has been practised on every inhabited continent on the planet for at least 40,000 a number of possibly quite definitely longer. Historically, shamanism was obviously a significant survival tool of prehistoric humans. Our hunter-gatherer forbears decorated the stone walls of caves and cliffs around the world with carved and painted images drawn directly from shamanic experience. We no more are in caves or even in tiny communities whose members are common seen to us. The majority of us live far longer, healthier lives than our ancient ancestors, but the brain, that section of us effective at fearing the dark and requesting the aid of things unseen, hasn’t changed in almost one fourth of an million years. What made the uncertain lives of prehistoric people that much easier works today because, although world could possibly have changed, fundamentally we have not.
Ask such a shaman is along with the question may evoke a number of words about Native American ‘medicine men’ and the word ‘witchdoctor’. In fact, such a shaman is and does is merely explained. In the Siberian Tungus language which produced the phrase, ‘shaman’ means ‘the individual who sees’ and is the term for a person creating a ‘journey’ to alternate realities during an altered state of consciousness in order to meet and work with spirit helpers. Just what the shaman ‘sees’, what she realises, with this experience with meeting spirits is the fact that there isn’t any separation between any situation that is: no separation between me writing so you reading these words, from a cat and dog, between life and death, between this apparently material reality and the non-material realities of the spirit worlds. This idea of ‘oneness’ is common currency in contemporary culture and increasingly given credence by certain quantum physicists working with sub atomic theory, regarded course it’s a predominantly physical, instead of a spiritual, oneness that such scientists are trying to describe. However, where the majority of us are only able to consider the thought of ‘oneness’, shaman’s actually live it through the experience with the shamanic ‘journey’ and direct, personal interaction with spirit.
Identified as a ‘breakthrough in plane’, in physiological terms right onto your pathway begins because shaman redirects the principal cognitive process from your left cerebral hemisphere with the brain to the right, through the corpus collosum – which is, from the structuring, organising hemisphere, to the visualising, sensing one. In the overwhelming tastes traditions around the globe this ‘breakthrough’ is going to be assisted by the use of percussive sound, like drumming, rattling or clapping. Although hallucinogens, including ayahuasca, are widely advertised in the West as a way to assist alter consciousness, in reality just about 10% of traditional shamans use plants this way. Metaphysically, right onto your pathway begins if the shaman’s consciousness shifts from the present and enters worlds visible just to her. These worlds, which vary with each and every culture and tradition all over the world, are described as ‘alternate reality’, ‘the arena of the spirits’, or ‘non-ordinary reality’. Some traditions call shamans ‘the walker between the worlds’ since they’re the bridge between ‘here’ and ‘there’.
Although often considered primitive or seen as ‘religion’ of less developed peoples and cultures, Psychedelics is both subtle and paradoxical. The ‘worlds’ of shamanic journeys are utterly real – they exist and could be felt, smelt and experienced as clearly as this ‘ordinary’ reality. As well they are qualitative spaces, states to become that reflect and support the reason for the shaman’s journey – to request help, healing or information in the spirits. Contemporary research from the cognitive sciences suggests that a persons mental abilities are hardwired to determine the ‘unseen’ as well as the mystical; perhaps the Lower, Middle and Upper Worlds of the shaman – translated into Hell, Earth and Heaven in later tripartite cosmologies – are seemingly a natural part of human perception.
Unsurprisingly, among the questions normally asked by students being shown shamanism is, “What are spirits?”. Perhaps because Western society has mostly avoided contemplating spirituality for many generations we lack a clear, objective idea of things such as spirits. Currently it’s actually a one-size-fits-all word encompassing entities, energies, ghosts, angels, ancestors, the undead, elves, fairies; their list is seemingly endless. Personally, I’ve two understandings in the concept of spirit and though both the coincide, they may not be exactly the same but they help me. The Core Shamanic, or Western, tradition which underpins my very own practice and teaching, describes spirits included in all that exists. I am a spirit currently inhabiting an actual physical body so that you can have a human experience. The spirits I meet on my own ‘journeys’ are dis-embodied and thus provide an existential overview unavailable to me, but we are basically the same: particles of infinite universal energy, fragments from the Great Spirit. We all result from this energy, exist inside and resume it. It is really living this attitude that allows a shaman to experience having less separation between items that ordinary-reality considers very separate indeed, including life and death or health insurance and disease.
My second understanding of spirit is much more psychological and archetypal and it was plain and simple explained by CG Jung in the autobiography ‘Memories, Dreams, Reflections’. Describing his knowledge of spirit helpers Jung wrote, “Philemon… brought where you can me the insight that you have things inside the psyche i don’t produce, but which produce themselves and also have their very own life. Philemon represented a force which has been not myself.” This is the beautifully lucid explanation of how it can feel to activate with spirit throughout a shamanic journey. More prosaically, I describe the whole process of journeying to my students as having one’s imagination harnessed and directed by something external.
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