Ask any passer-by on any street to describe shamanism and also the result will likely be blank stares. So many people are surprised to understand that shamanism is not an religion however the oldest spiritual and problem-solving technology on earth. Even more surprising will be the discovery that it is the precursor to most major world religions, such as Judaeo-Christian and Buddhist traditions, and that it continues to be practised on every inhabited continent in the world for at least 40,000 a few years 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 straight from shamanic experience. We not are now living in caves or even in very small communities whose members are proven to us. Many people live far longer, healthier lives than our ancient ancestors, but the brain, that a part of us able to fearing the dark and requesting aid from things unseen, hasn’t changed in almost 1 / 4 of a million years. What made the uncertain lives of prehistoric people that much easier works today because, even though the world might have changed, fundamentally we have not.
Ask such a shaman is and the question may evoke a number of words about Native American ‘medicine men’ or word ‘witchdoctor’. In reality, exactly what a shaman is and does is merely explained. Inside the Siberian Tungus language which produced the saying, ‘shaman’ means ‘the person who sees’ and describes someone creating a ‘journey’ to alternate realities when it’s in an altered state of consciousness to get to know and use spirit helpers. What the shaman ‘sees’, what she realises, during this experience of meeting spirits is always that there is absolutely no separation between whatever is: no separation between me writing and you reading these words, between a cat and dog, between life and death, between this apparently material reality along with the non-material realities from the spirit worlds. This idea of ‘oneness’ is typical 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 are attempting to describe. However, where many of us could only take into account the understanding of ‘oneness’, shaman’s actually live it from the connection with the shamanic ‘journey’ and direct, personal interaction with spirit.
Described as a ‘breakthrough in plane’, in physiological terms the journey begins because shaman redirects the primary cognitive process through the left cerebral hemisphere from the brain to the right, with the corpus collosum – which is, through the structuring, organising hemisphere, towards the visualising, sensing one. In the overwhelming majority of traditions worldwide this ‘breakthrough’ will probably be assisted using percussive sound, including drumming, rattling or clapping. Although hallucinogens, for example ayahuasca, are widely advertised under western culture as a method to help alter consciousness, actually just about 10% of traditional shamans use plants like this. Metaphysically, right onto your pathway begins in the event the shaman’s consciousness shifts from your present and enters worlds visible just to her. These worlds, which vary with each and every culture and tradition worldwide, are described as ‘alternate reality’, ‘the arena of the spirits’, or ‘non-ordinary reality’. Some traditions call shamans ‘the walker involving the worlds’ because they’re the bridge between ‘here’ and ‘there’.
Although often considered primitive or viewed as a ‘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. As well they are qualitative spaces, states for being that reflect and offer the reason behind the shaman’s journey – to inquire about help, healing or information from your spirits. Contemporary research within the cognitive sciences implies that the human being brain is hardwired to see the ‘unseen’ and the mystical; even the 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, one of several questions most frequently asked by students being shown shamanism is, “What are spirits?”. Perhaps because Western society has mostly avoided thinking of spirituality for a lot of generations we lack a definite, objective idea of such things as spirits. Nowadays it’s really a one-size-fits-all word encompassing entities, energies, ghosts, angels, ancestors, the undead, elves, fairies; their email list is seemingly endless. Personally, I have two understandings in the thought of spirit despite the fact that the two coincide, they may not be precisely the same and yet they benefit me. The Core Shamanic, or Western, tradition which underpins my own, personal practice and teaching, describes spirits included in all that exists. I am a spirit currently inhabiting a physical body as a way to possess a human experience. The spirits I meet in my ‘journeys’ are dis-embodied and therefore come with an existential overview unavailable to me, but we are basically the same: particles of infinite universal energy, fragments with the Great Spirit. We all originate from this energy, exist there and go back to it. It is in reality living this attitude which allows a shaman to experience having less separation between things that ordinary-reality considers very separate indeed, such as life and death or health insurance disease.
My second understanding 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 personal expertise of spirit helpers Jung wrote, “Philemon… brought you will find me the important insight there are things inside the psyche i usually do not produce, but which produce themselves and have their particular life. Philemon represented a force that was not myself.” This can be a beautifully lucid explanation of how it may feel to have interaction with spirit during a shamanic journey. More prosaically, I describe the entire process of journeying to my students as having one’s imagination harnessed and directed by something external.
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