Ask any passer-by on any street to spell it out shamanism along with the result will probably be blank stares. So many people are surprised to master that shamanism is not an religion nevertheless the oldest spiritual and problem-solving technology on the planet. Much more surprising is the discovery that it’s the precursor to the majority major world religions, such as the Judaeo-Christian and Buddhist traditions, which continues to be practised on every inhabited continent on the planet not less than 40,000 a few years possibly very much longer. Historically, shamanism was obviously 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 directly from shamanic experience. We no longer reside in caves or in very small communities whose members are known to us. The majority of us live far longer, healthier lives than our ancient ancestors, but our brains, that portion of us effective at fearing the dark and asking for the help of things unseen, hasn’t changed in almost a quarter of an million years. What made the uncertain lives of prehistoric people less difficult works today because, even though world could have changed, fundamentally we’ve not.
Ask such a shaman is along with the question may evoke several words about Native American ‘medicine men’ and the word ‘witchdoctor’. Actually, what a shaman is and does is just explained. From the Siberian Tungus language which produced the phrase, ‘shaman’ means ‘the one that sees’ and identifies someone capable of making a ‘journey’ to alternate realities whilst in an altered condition of consciousness to get to know and assist spirit helpers. What are the shaman ‘sees’, what she realises, with this experience with meeting spirits is the fact that there is absolutely no separation between anything that is: no separation between me writing and also you reading these words, from a cat and dog, between life and death, between this apparently material reality as well as the non-material realities from 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, though of course this is a predominantly physical, as opposed to a spiritual, oneness that such scientists making the effort to describe. However, where the majority of us could only look at the thought of ‘oneness’, shaman’s actually live it through the example of the shamanic ‘journey’ and direct, personal interaction with spirit.
Described as a ‘breakthrough in plane’, in physiological terms right onto your pathway begins because shaman redirects the primary cognitive process through the left cerebral hemisphere of the brain to the right, from the corpus collosum – that’s, from the structuring, organising hemisphere, to the visualising, sensing one. In the overwhelming majority of traditions worldwide this ‘breakthrough’ will likely be assisted using percussive sound, like drumming, rattling or clapping. Although hallucinogens, including ayahuasca, are widely advertised under western culture as a way to help alter consciousness, in reality approximately 10% of traditional shamans use plants this way. Metaphysically, your journey begins when the shaman’s consciousness shifts from your present and enters worlds visible only to her. These worlds, which vary with each and every culture and tradition around the world, 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 are the bridge between ‘here’ and ‘there’.
Although often considered primitive or seen 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 could be felt, smelt and experienced as clearly since this ‘ordinary’ reality. Concurrently they may be qualitative spaces, states to become that reflect and offer the basis for the shaman’s journey – to ask for help, healing or information from your spirits. Contemporary research inside the cognitive sciences points too a person’s mental faculties are hardwired to view the ‘unseen’ along with the mystical; even 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.
Obviously, one of the questions most regularly asked by students being shown shamanism is, “What are spirits?”. Perhaps because Western society has mostly avoided considering spirituality for a lot of generations we lack an obvious, objective comprehension of specific things like spirits. These days 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, We have two understandings with the notion of spirit even though the 2 coincide, they may not be the identical but they benefit me. The main Shamanic, or Western, tradition which underpins my own practice and teaching, describes spirits within everything that exists. I am a spirit currently inhabiting an actual physical body to be able to have a very human experience. The spirits I meet on my small ‘journeys’ are dis-embodied and therefore come with an existential overview unavailable if you ask me, but we have been basically the same: particles of infinite universal energy, fragments of the Great Spirit. Many of us originate from this energy, exist there and return to it. It is actually living this perspective that allows a shaman to see the lack of separation between things that ordinary-reality considers very separate indeed, like life and death or health insurance and disease.
My second understanding of spirit is much more psychological and archetypal and it was plain and simply explained by CG Jung in his autobiography ‘Memories, Dreams, Reflections’. Describing his personal expertise of spirit helpers Jung wrote, “Philemon… brought you will find me the crucial insight that there are things from the psyche that we don’t produce, but which produce themselves and also have their own life. Philemon represented a force which has been not myself.” It is a beautifully lucid explanation of precisely how it can feel to activate with spirit after 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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