Ask any passer-by on any street to describe shamanism as well as the result is going to be blank stares. Most people are surprised to learn that shamanism is not an religion however the oldest spiritual and problem-solving technology on this planet. More surprising could be the discovery that it is the precursor to the majority major world religions, such as the Judaeo-Christian and Buddhist traditions, and that it has become practised on every inhabited continent on the planet not less than 40,000 a few years possibly a lot 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 globe with carved and painted images drawn directly from shamanic experience. We no longer are now living in caves or perhaps very small communities whose members are all recognized to us. Most of us live far longer, healthier lives than our ancient ancestors, but our minds, that a part of us capable of fearing the dark and seeking the aid of things unseen, hasn’t changed in almost 1 / 4 of the million years. What made the uncertain lives of prehistoric people that much easier works today because, even though the world could possibly have changed, fundamentally we’ve not.
Ask such a shaman is and the question may evoke a few words about Native American ‘medicine men’ or word ‘witchdoctor’. Actually, exactly what a shaman is and does is simply explained. From the Siberian Tungus language which produced the saying, ‘shaman’ means ‘the one who sees’ and identifies someone capable of making a ‘journey’ to alternate realities during an altered condition of consciousness to get to know and assist spirit helpers. What the shaman ‘sees’, what she realises, during this connection with meeting spirits is there is absolutely no separation between something that is: no separation between me writing and also you reading these words, from the dog and cat, between life and death, between this apparently material reality and the non-material realities with 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, though of course this is a predominantly physical, rather than a spiritual, oneness that such scientists want to describe. However, where many people could only think about the thought of ‘oneness’, shaman’s actually live it over the example of the shamanic ‘journey’ and direct, personal interaction with spirit.
Called a ‘breakthrough in plane’, in physiological terms the journey begins because the shaman redirects the principal cognitive process from your left cerebral hemisphere from the brain to the correct, from the corpus collosum – that is certainly, from your structuring, organising hemisphere, towards the visualising, sensing one. Inside the overwhelming tastes traditions around the globe this ‘breakthrough’ will likely be assisted by way of percussive sound, including drumming, rattling or clapping. Although hallucinogens, like ayahuasca, are widely advertised in the West as a way to aid alter consciousness, actually approximately 10% of traditional shamans use plants like this. Metaphysically, your journey begins when the shaman’s consciousness shifts from the here and now and enters worlds visible only to her. These worlds, which vary with each and every culture and tradition around the globe, are referred to as ‘alternate reality’, ‘the arena of the spirits’, or ‘non-ordinary reality’. Some traditions call shamans ‘the walker involving 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 can be felt, smelt and experienced as clearly simply because this ‘ordinary’ reality. At the same time they are qualitative spaces, states for being that reflect and keep the cause of the shaman’s journey – to inquire about help, healing or information from your spirits. Contemporary research inside the cognitive sciences suggests that the human being mental abilities are hardwired to see the ‘unseen’ and also the mystical; perhaps the Lower, Middle and Upper Worlds from the shaman – translated into Hell, Earth and Heaven in later tripartite cosmologies – are seemingly a natural part of human perception.
Unsurprisingly, one of many questions most frequently asked by students being unveiled in shamanism is, “What are spirits?”. Perhaps because Western society has mostly avoided thinking about spirituality for a lot of generations we lack a definite, objective understanding of specific things like spirits. Currently it is a one-size-fits-all word encompassing entities, energies, ghosts, angels, ancestors, the undead, elves, fairies; the list is seemingly endless. Personally, I have two understandings of the thought of spirit reality both the coincide, they aren’t the same yet they benefit me. The Core Shamanic, or Western, tradition which underpins my personal practice and teaching, describes spirits as part of everything exists. I’m a spirit currently inhabiting an actual body in order to have a human experience. The spirits I meet on my small ‘journeys’ are dis-embodied and therefore provide an existential overview unavailable in my experience, but we are basically the same: particles of infinite universal energy, fragments from the Great Spirit. Most of us result from this energy, exist inside it and resume it. It is in reality living this angle allowing a shaman to experience the absence of separation between items that ordinary-reality considers very separate indeed, for example life and death or wellness disease.
My second understanding of spirit is a lot more psychological and archetypal and was plain and simply explained by CG Jung as part of his autobiography ‘Memories, Dreams, Reflections’. Describing his knowledge of spirit helpers Jung wrote, “Philemon… brought where you can me the crucial insight that we now have things in the psyche which I don’t produce, but which produce themselves and still have their very own life. Philemon represented a force which was not myself.” It is a beautifully lucid explanation of the way it could feel to get with spirit after a shamanic journey. More prosaically, I describe the operation of journeying to my students as having one’s imagination harnessed and directed by something external.
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