Ask any passer-by on any street to explain shamanism along with the result will probably be blank stares. Everybody is surprised to learn that shamanism isn’t a religion nevertheless the oldest spiritual and problem-solving technology in the world. Even more surprising will be the discovery that it’s the precursor to the majority of major world religions, like the Judaeo-Christian and Buddhist traditions, which has been practised on every inhabited continent on this planet for around 40,000 a few years 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 around the globe with carved and painted images drawn directly from shamanic experience. We no more are now living in caves or in very small communities whose members are all recognized to us. Many of us live far longer, healthier lives than our ancient ancestors, but our brains, that section of us able to fearing the dark and requesting the aid of 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 world could possibly have changed, fundamentally we have not.
Ask what a shaman is and also the question may evoke several words about Native American ‘medicine men’ or perhaps the word ‘witchdoctor’. The truth is, that of a shaman is and does is just explained. From the Siberian Tungus language which produced the term, ‘shaman’ means ‘the one that sees’ and describes an individual capable of making a ‘journey’ to alternate realities whilst in an altered state of consciousness to get to know and use spirit helpers. What are the shaman ‘sees’, what she realises, during this experience of meeting spirits is that there’s no separation between any situation that is: no separation between me writing so you reading these words, from your dog and cat, between life and death, between this apparently material reality and also 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, regarded course it’s a predominantly physical, rather than a spiritual, oneness that such scientists are trying to describe. However, where many people can only consider the perception of ‘oneness’, shaman’s actually live it through the example of the shamanic ‘journey’ and direct, personal interaction with spirit.
Called a ‘breakthrough in plane’, in physiological terms the journey begins since the shaman redirects the main cognitive process from the left cerebral hemisphere from the brain to the correct, with the corpus collosum – that’s, from the structuring, organising hemisphere, to the visualising, sensing one. From the overwhelming majority of traditions worldwide this ‘breakthrough’ will probably be assisted through percussive sound, for example drumming, rattling or clapping. Although hallucinogens, such as ayahuasca, are widely advertised under western culture as a method to assist alter consciousness, in reality only about 10% of traditional shamans use plants this way. Metaphysically, your way begins in the event the shaman’s consciousness shifts through the here and now and enters worlds visible simply to her. These worlds, which vary with each and every culture and tradition around the globe, are referred to as ‘alternate reality’, ‘the an entire world of the spirits’, or ‘non-ordinary reality’. Some traditions call shamans ‘the walker between your worlds’ because they’re the bridge between ‘here’ and ‘there’.
Although often considered primitive or seen as an ‘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 is felt, smelt and experienced as clearly since this ‘ordinary’ reality. Concurrently they may be qualitative spaces, states for being that reflect and offer the cause of the shaman’s journey – to ask for help, healing or information in the spirits. Contemporary research in the cognitive sciences implies that a persons mental faculties are hardwired to find out the ‘unseen’ as well as the mystical; perhaps 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.
Not surprisingly, one of the questions normally asked by students being introduced to shamanism is, “What are spirits?”. Perhaps because Western society has mostly avoided considering spirituality for most generations we lack a clear, objective idea of things like spirits. Today it’s a one-size-fits-all word encompassing entities, energies, ghosts, angels, ancestors, the undead, elves, fairies; their list is seemingly endless. Personally, I’ve two understandings of the concept of spirit reality the 2 coincide, they may not be the same nevertheless they work for me. The main Shamanic, or Western, tradition which underpins my personal practice and teaching, describes spirits included in everything that exists. I’m a spirit currently inhabiting an actual body as a way to have a very human experience. The spirits I meet on my ‘journeys’ are dis-embodied and so come with an existential overview unavailable in my opinion, but we have been basically the same: particles of infinite universal energy, fragments of the Great Spirit. Most of us result from this energy, exist there and resume it. It really is living this attitude that enables a shaman to experience having less separation between items that ordinary-reality considers very separate indeed, like life and death or health insurance disease.
My second knowledge of spirit is a bit more psychological and archetypal and was plain and simple explained by CG Jung in the autobiography ‘Memories, Dreams, Reflections’. Describing his knowledge of spirit helpers Jung wrote, “Philemon… brought you will find me the key insight there are things inside the psyche that we tend not to produce, but which produce themselves and have their very own life. Philemon represented a force which was not myself.” This can be a beautifully lucid explanation of the way it might feel to get with spirit within 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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