Ask any passer-by on any street to spell it out shamanism along with the result will probably be blank stares. Most people are surprised to understand that shamanism is very little religion but the oldest spiritual and problem-solving technology in the world. Much more surprising may be the discovery that it is the precursor to the majority major world religions, including the Judaeo-Christian and Buddhist traditions, which has become practised on every inhabited continent on the planet for at least 40,000 years and possibly quite definitely longer. Historically, shamanism would be a significant survival tool of prehistoric humans. Our hunter-gatherer forbears decorated the stone walls of caves and cliffs all over the world with carved and painted images drawn straight from shamanic experience. We no more are now living in caves or even in tiny communities whose members are all recognized to us. Many of us live far longer, healthier lives than our ancient ancestors, but our mind, that a part of us effective at fearing the dark and seeking help from things unseen, hasn’t changed in almost a quarter of an million years. What made the uncertain lives of prehistoric people a whole lot easier works today because, even though world could have changed, fundamentally we haven’t.
Ask exactly what a shaman is and also the question may evoke a number of words about Native American ‘medicine men’ and the word ‘witchdoctor’. In reality, such a shaman is and does is merely explained. Within the Siberian Tungus language which produced the phrase, ‘shaman’ means ‘the one that sees’ and is the term for someone able to make a ‘journey’ to alternate realities when it’s in an altered state of consciousness to get to know and work with spirit helpers. Exactly what the shaman ‘sees’, what she realises, with this connection with meeting spirits is there’s no separation between whatever is: no separation between me writing so you reading these words, between a dog and cat, between life and death, between this apparently material reality along with the non-material realities with the spirit worlds. This idea of ‘oneness’ is normal currency in contemporary culture and increasingly given credence by certain quantum physicists working together with sub atomic theory, regarded course this is a predominantly physical, as opposed to a spiritual, oneness that such scientists want to describe. However, where most of us is only able to think about the notion of ‘oneness’, shaman’s actually live it over the connection with the shamanic ‘journey’ and direct, personal interaction with spirit.
Identified as a ‘breakthrough in plane’, in physiological terms the journey begins because the shaman redirects the key cognitive process through the left cerebral hemisphere of the brain right, through the corpus collosum – that is, in the structuring, organising hemisphere, to the visualising, sensing one. From the overwhelming most of traditions all over the world this ‘breakthrough’ will probably be assisted by way of percussive sound, like drumming, rattling or clapping. Although hallucinogens, including ayahuasca, are widely advertised in the western world as a technique to help you alter consciousness, actually approximately 10% of traditional shamans use plants like this. Metaphysically, your way begins in the event the shaman’s consciousness shifts in the present and enters worlds visible only to her. These worlds, which vary with each culture and tradition worldwide, are described as ‘alternate reality’, ‘the an entire world of the spirits’, or ‘non-ordinary reality’. Some traditions call shamans ‘the walker between the worlds’ as they are the bridge between ‘here’ and ‘there’.
Although often considered primitive or seen as ‘religion’ of less developed peoples and cultures, San Pedro shamanism 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 may be qualitative spaces, states to become that reflect and offer the reason behind the shaman’s journey – to request help, healing or information in the spirits. Contemporary research in the cognitive sciences shows that the human mental faculties are hardwired to find out the ‘unseen’ along with the mystical; even the Lower, Middle and Upper Worlds in the shaman – translated into Hell, Earth and Heaven in later tripartite cosmologies – are seemingly an important part of human perception.
Unsurprisingly, one of many questions most often asked by students being introduced to shamanism is, “What are spirits?”. Perhaps because Western society has mostly avoided thinking of spirituality for a lot of generations we lack a clear, objective understanding of things such as spirits. Currently it’s a one-size-fits-all word encompassing entities, energies, ghosts, angels, ancestors, the undead, elves, fairies; their email list is seemingly endless. Personally, I’ve two understandings of the thought of spirit despite the fact that the 2 coincide, they are not the same but they work with me. The main Shamanic, or Western, tradition which underpins my very own practice and teaching, describes spirits within everything exists. I am a spirit currently inhabiting an actual body as a way to possess a human experience. The spirits I meet on my small ‘journeys’ are dis-embodied and for that reason provide an existential overview unavailable in my experience, but we are essentially the same: particles of infinite universal energy, fragments from the Great Spirit. We all come from this energy, exist there and go back to it. It really is living this attitude allowing a shaman to have the possible lack of separation between things that ordinary-reality considers very separate indeed, including life and death or health and disease.
My second understanding of spirit is more psychological and archetypal and was plain and simple explained by CG Jung in his autobiography ‘Memories, Dreams, Reflections’. Describing his personal expertise of spirit helpers Jung wrote, “Philemon… brought home to me the insight that there are things inside the psyche that i usually do not produce, but which produce themselves and possess their own life. Philemon represented a force that has been not myself.” This can be a beautifully lucid explanation of methods it may feel to interact 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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