Ask any passer-by on any street to spell it out shamanism and the result might be blank stares. Many people are surprised to master that shamanism is very little religion nevertheless the oldest spiritual and problem-solving technology in the world. Even more surprising is the discovery that it is the precursor to most major world religions, such as Judaeo-Christian and Buddhist traditions, and that it may be practised on every inhabited continent on earth for about 40,000 a number of possibly a lot longer. Historically, shamanism would have been a significant survival tool of prehistoric humans. Our hunter-gatherer forbears decorated the stone walls of caves and cliffs worldwide with carved and painted images drawn directly from shamanic experience. We not reside in caves or perhaps in tiny communities whose members are seen to us. Most of us live far longer, healthier lives than our ancient ancestors, but the brain, that part of us capable of fearing the dark and seeking aid from things unseen, hasn’t changed in almost one fourth of the million years. What made the uncertain lives of prehistoric people less difficult works today because, although the world might have changed, fundamentally we haven’t.
Ask what a shaman is and also the question may evoke a number of words about Native American ‘medicine men’ or perhaps the word ‘witchdoctor’. In reality, that of a shaman is and does is simply explained. Inside the Siberian Tungus language which produced the phrase, ‘shaman’ means ‘the person who sees’ and describes somebody capable of making a ‘journey’ to alternate realities whilst in an altered condition of consciousness in order to meet and use spirit helpers. What the shaman ‘sees’, what she realises, during this experience with meeting spirits is always that there is no separation between whatever 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 along with the non-material realities of the spirit worlds. This idea of ‘oneness’ is typical currency in contemporary culture and increasingly given credence by certain quantum physicists utilizing sub atomic theory, though of course it is just a predominantly physical, instead of a spiritual, oneness that such scientists want to describe. However, where many of us can only take into account the thought of ‘oneness’, shaman’s actually live it over the experience with the shamanic ‘journey’ and direct, personal interaction with spirit.
Described as a ‘breakthrough in plane’, in physiological terms your journey begins as the shaman redirects the key cognitive process from the left cerebral hemisphere from the brain right, from the corpus collosum – that’s, in the structuring, organising hemisphere, on the visualising, sensing one. In the overwhelming most traditions all over the world this ‘breakthrough’ will likely be assisted by way of percussive sound, like drumming, rattling or clapping. Although hallucinogens, including ayahuasca, are widely advertised under western culture as a technique to help alter consciousness, actually no more than 10% of traditional shamans use plants like this. Metaphysically, the journey begins when the shaman’s consciousness shifts from your present and enters worlds visible just to her. These worlds, which vary with each culture and tradition around the world, are referred to as ‘alternate reality’, ‘the arena of the spirits’, or ‘non-ordinary reality’. Some traditions call shamans ‘the walker relating to the worlds’ because they’re the bridge between ‘here’ and ‘there’.
Although often considered primitive or seen as ‘religion’ of less developed peoples and cultures, San Pedro cactus is both subtle and paradoxical. The ‘worlds’ of shamanic journeys are utterly real – they exist and can be felt, smelt and experienced as clearly as this ‘ordinary’ reality. Concurrently they’re qualitative spaces, states of being that reflect and secure the cause of the shaman’s journey – to ask for help, healing or information in the spirits. Contemporary research in the cognitive sciences suggests that the human being brain is hardwired to find out the ‘unseen’ along with the mystical; even Lower, Middle and Upper Worlds from the shaman – translated into Hell, Earth and Heaven in later tripartite cosmologies – are seemingly an important part of human perception.
Unsurprisingly, among the questions most regularly asked by students being introduced to shamanism is, “What are spirits?”. Perhaps because Western society has mostly avoided thinking of spirituality for most generations we lack a specific, objective understanding of things like spirits. Today it’s actually a one-size-fits-all word encompassing entities, energies, ghosts, angels, ancestors, the undead, elves, fairies; this list is seemingly endless. Personally, We’ve two understandings from the idea of spirit even though both coincide, they’re not exactly the same yet they work with me. The main Shamanic, or Western, tradition which underpins my own practice and teaching, describes spirits as part of everything that exists. I am a spirit currently inhabiting an actual physical body as a way to have a very human experience. The spirits I meet on my small ‘journeys’ are dis-embodied and thus come with an existential overview unavailable if you ask me, but were basically the same: particles of infinite universal energy, fragments of the Great Spirit. Many of us are derived from this energy, exist there and return to it. It is in reality living this attitude that allows a shaman to experience the absence of separation between items that ordinary-reality considers very separate indeed, for example life and death or health insurance disease.
My second comprehension of spirit is a lot more psychological and archetypal and was very simply explained by CG Jung in the autobiography ‘Memories, Dreams, Reflections’. Describing his knowledge of spirit helpers Jung wrote, “Philemon… brought the place to find me the insight there are things within the psyche that we don’t produce, but which produce themselves and still have their unique life. Philemon represented a force that was not myself.” This is a beautifully lucid explanation of how it may feel to get with spirit during a shamanic journey. More prosaically, I describe the process of journeying to my students as having one’s imagination harnessed and directed by something external.
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