SUMMARY COMMENTS ON SHAMANISM
KEY WORDS: intention and trust -- clear focus of intention, what asking for; trust in that spirits that will come when one calls and will help with wish as well as trusting what they do say. History of 30,000-40,000 years. Roots of "shaman" - Tungus, Siberia - one who sees in the dark, healer. Aspects shared worldwide: multilayered cosmology, shamanic ecstatic trance, ability to move through multilayered realities/manipulate spirits/work in non-ordinary reality (access benevolent wisdom of universe). Power of shaman - trance state, support of helping spirits, use of song/sound/dance. Shaman as a hollow bone - allow spirits to move thru one to effect healing. Ability to evolve to fit needs of people
From Serge Kahili King (Urban Shaman -- on applications of Hawaiian shamanism):
Defines a shaman as "a healer of relationships between mind and body, between people, between people and circumstances, between humans and Nature and between matter and spirit" (p.14). Approach of Polynesian shamans different than Amerindian and others in not using masks or drumming to achieve ecstatic state. Kahuna kapua - mastery in 7 areas - psychic (telepathy & clairvoyance, journeying to other worlds etc), releaser of mental & physical blocks (use energy to release mental, physical, emotional stress), manifester of events (change weather etc.), shapechanger (take on characteristics of animals, objects, merge w/ elements), peacemaker (create harmony within self, between people,nature etc), teacher (demonstrate & share knowledge, help people discover own power to change lives), adventurer (be flexible, comfortable w/ change & direct it in a positive way etc)- process emphasizes self-esteem, inner authority, and power of words to direct energy, evoke imagery, and create beliefs (27-29).
Three Aspects of Consciousness: (p.36-51)
(1) Heart aspect - Ku (heart, body, subconscious) - primary function - memory (stored in body as vibration/movement pattern), primary motivation, pleasure. No distinction between past, present, future; every experience is is stored as a body memory - intensity of experience & thus "realness" measured by how much physiological (emotional, chemical, muscular) reaction there is.
(2) Mind Aspect - Lono - (conscious mind) - part of self which is consciously aware of internal & external input - primary function is decision making (includes attention, intent, choosing, & interpretation) - focus of attention - intent of decision-making that directs awareness as well as activity (controlling, cooperative, uncontrollable - balanced - cooperative lono lets ku do its thing). Choosing - making decision to turn attention in one direction rather than another - is how you continue to think after making a decision that makes the future turn out the way it does. Interpretation - decision about meaning/validity of experience, sets up patterns of expectation & filtering that have great bearing on future experience. Is done by either evaluation (decision is good/bad, right/wrong - value assessment) or analysis (decision that something is or isn't - what is /is not important, without emotional response). Primary motivation of lono - order (rules, categories, and understanding, logic). Primary tool of lono is imagination - is thru your imagination that you influence and direct your aspects and the world around you.
(3) Spirit Aspect - Kane (spirit, superconsciousness) - primary function "is creativity in the form of mental and physical experience"; primary motivation, harmony; primary tool - energy, "universe is made of energy and it is energy that sustains and maintains and changes the dreams of life" imagination of lono directs energy, sensation of ku lets us experience its effects.
Seven Shaman Principles (p. 52-81)
(1) First Principle: IKE - The World is What you Think it is - thoughts of fear, worry, anger make us sick & diminish our effectiveness; thoughts of confidence, determination, love make us well & increase our performance. Belief that your experience is determined by your faith, by what you believe in. Corollary: everything is a dream. We dream our lives into being, dreams are real and reality is a dream. For shamans, experience we call ordinary everyday reality is a shared dream. "If this life is a dream, and if we can wake up fully within it, then we can change the dream by changing our dreaming." (56) Corollary: All systems are arbitrary. All meanings are made up and the Absolute Truth is whatever you decide it is. "The meaning of experience depends on your interpretation of it or your decision to accept someone else's interpretation, and the decision to accept a basic assumption is also arbitrary" Can change your world by changing your thought
(2) Second Principle: KALA - There are No Limits -- How to explain limitations we experience: two kinds, creative and filtered. "Physical universe of our perception may be effect of creative choices of limiting factors on part of God or own Higher Selves that enable us to experience life on earth." "The rules of the game are limitations created so you can play the game". "Creative limitation allows us to improve our creative abilities by enforcing a focus on a certain range and interpretation of experience" (58-59). Filtered limitation means limitations imposed by ideas and beliefs that inhibit creativity rather than enhance it, like beliefs that engender helplessness and hopelessness or revenge and cruelty. "Filtered limitations generate focus without the potential for positive action." Corollary: Everything is connected. Symbol of the spider web. Corollary: Anything is possible. All you have to do is believe it. Corollary: Separation is a useful illusion, use of compassion, in which you are aware of the suffering while realizing it isn't happening to you.
(3) Third Principle: MAKIA -- Energy Flows Where Attention Goes -- successful technique of shamans - meditation & hypnosis. Meditation -- sustained focused attention, such attention channels the energy of the universe into manifesting the physical equivalent of the focus, sum total of entire attention including habitual expectation during meditation. Hypnosis, another form of meditation - refocusing your attention toward more positive beliefs and expectations. Corollary: Attention goes where energy flows. Attention attracted to any strong source of energy that stimulates any of our senses. Corollary: Everything is energy. - includes idea that thought is energy and that one kind of energy can be converted into another kind of energy. (62-64).
(4) Fourth Principle: MANAWA - Now is the Moment of Power - Contrast to notion of karma (working off of past debts). Shamanic tradition is in contrast: "the past did not give you what you have today, nor make you what you are today. It is your beliefs, decisions, and actions today about yourself and the world around you that give you what you have and make you what you are. Karma exists and operates only in the present moment. To the degree that you change yourself in the present moment - thoughts and behavior - you change your world. Corollary: Everything is relative. Define what now is - area/range of present attention, from the present can change the past and future. Corollary: Power increases with sensory attention. Focus on sensory present - be consciously aware of the input from your senses. Exploring present moment - become aware of colors in environment, straight & curved lines, sounds, position of body, sensations of clothing, breathing.
(5) Fifth Principle: ALOHA - To Love is to Be Happy With - Root alo - to be with, share an experience, here and now; root oha - affection, joy. Corollary: Love increases as judgment decreases. Fear, anger, doubt, give rise to negative criticism and judgment which cause separation, diminishes love. Criticism kills relationships. Corollary: Everything is alive, aware, and responsive. Life is defined as movement (some things just move very slowly - rocks), Source is self aware. Consequences of criticism and praise - Ku doesn't distinguish between you and dream so when you criticize another person etc. your ku takes it personally and body gets tense; opposite when praise; more you criticize/praise the more those activities will be increased. Praise brings you closer to and increases awareness of what you praise thereby expanding your growth in many ways. Whenever criticized, praise yourself and the criticism will have no effect on you as long as you don't fear it
(6) Sixth Principle: MANA -- All Power Comes From Within - All the power that creates your experience comes from your own body, mind, and spirit. If no limits, then Universe/Source of Life is infinite, all its power is at every point of it including the point that you define as you. If you are victim of some kind of abuse/injury then something in you helped to bring that about. This does NOT mean that you are to blame because you were probably not consciously aware of the beliefs, attitudes, and expectations on your part that were involved. Only by becoming aware of your part in event can you change factors in yourself that helped to bring it about. Corollary: Everything has power. Everyone has power to create their own experience. In any situation or event, all the people involved are creating their own experience. Everyone and everything has the same power. Corollary: Power comes from authority - outer authority - give decision making power to someone else, inner authority, more healthy, when you give it to yourself. Meaning of mana - power - is authority - to create. Speaking with authority means speaking with confidence that your words will produce results. Confident authority is the key to conscious creation, whether used with words, visualizations, or feelings.
(7) Seventh Principle: PONO - Effectiveness Is the Measure of Truth - Means determines the end (violent means, violent results; harmonious means, harmonious results). What is really important is what works. Healing is the goal and effectiveness is the criteria, not proving of a particular system or method. Corollary: There is always another way to do anything. Every problem has more than one solution. Explore the power of flexibility.
Seven Shaman Talents: Seeing (World is What You Think It Is) - ability to operate in world from perspectives of principles. Clearing (There are No Limits) - continuing to release physical, mental, emotional stress, bring other aspects of self & world into conscious awareness. Focusing (Energy Flows Where Attention Goes) - keeping intentions, objectives, goals, and purpose in mind - frequent review of motivations for doing whatever you do. Presence (Now is the Moment of Power) - remain in the present moment as much as you can. Blessing (Love is to Be Happy With) - To bless is to reinforce actual or potential good by word, image, or deed; bless potential - "may you have a safe journey". Empowering (All Power Comes from Within) - We empower something whenever we attribute any kind of power to it, another way to empower is to personify, attribute human qualities to nonhuman entities or objects. Skill of empowering implies skill of disempowering - disempower evil by depersonifying it so can learn to harmonize it. Dreamweaving (Effectiveness Is the Measure of Truth) - As a weaver of dreams, shaman weaves dreams for self and helps others to do the same ; goal: having a healer's attitude and taking healing action, mentally or physically, in every situation you encounter.
Sources of Stress - resistence - to stand apart. Natural resistance produces the healthy cycle of life in which things tend to hold their pattern but are flexible enough to adapt and change. Four kinds of resistence (w/ positive and negative aspects). Physical - when resistance produces enough tension to cause a breakdown in the body; change physical reactions - re-create the pattern but change the ending - give the ku a new memory of the event, requiring the ku to change the body state in conformity to the new version of what happened. Emotional - resistance from fear and anger continued thru memory - expectation effect (fear=expectation of pain); blanket forgiveness technique (whatever happened no longer important - touch part that's in pain, whatever related to forgive it completely & it doesn't matter anymore). Mental - when we resist anything, we generate stress - emotional resistance comes from thinking of something as bad; mental resistance comes from thinking of it as wrong, takes form of negative criticism. All that criticism does is create stress and reinforce what you criticize. Pointing out faults is motivated more by a desire to put someone down and feel superior than true desire to help. Twister - twist around usual pattern of criticism by acknowledging something good first. Sandwich - start with something good, then criticism, then positive statement. Spiritual - alienate self from place, group or world because you feel you don't belong - find ways to re-engage physically, emotionally, mindfully.
KAHI - touch of magic. One hand on troubled spot (release spot), one on power spot - 8 centers of body - crown, chest, navel, pubic bone, palms of hands, soles of feet; four corners - shoulders & hips. Focus attention on both hands at once while doing deep breathing.
CHANT: BE AWARE, BE FREE, BE FOCUSED, BE HERE,
BE LOVED, BE STRONG, BE HEALED
Spiritual Aspects of Illness (Shamanic Perspective)
Power loss - guardian spirits ("power animals") born with leave and new one(s) don't come in to take their place. (Chronic emotional depression, chronic illness, chronic misfortune)
Soul loss - loss of life essence due to trauma or soul theft - no one else can use one's energy
Spiritual intrusions - comes in to fill void/empty space in body - expressed as chronic anger/fatigue, emotional/physical pain
Spiritual Character of the Native American
Paula Gunn Allen's analysis of the central role of women in Native American tradition in The Sacrad Hoop, Recovering the Feminine in American Indian Traditions (1986) clearly demonstrates the significance of an alternative view of reality, a reality that has been shared worldwide for millennia by tribal cultures (p. 5). As she notes: "American Indians have based their social systems, however diverse, on ritual, spirit-centered, woman-focused worldviews"; they are gynocratic in nature (p. 2). The power of life itself is represented in myth, ceremony and ritual as the Creatrix Mother. And Indians have endured. In her words, "tribal systems have been operating in the "new world" for several hundred thousand years. It is unlikely that a few hundred years of colonization will see their undoing" (p. 2). In many respects, the values represented by Native Americans are precisely those that ecologically minded individuals and groups are trying to recover, values we need to resurrect if we are going to have a future at all.
According to Paula Gunn Allen, the basic concepts of American Indian systems include "cooperation (but by that traditional Indians generally meant something other than noncompetitiveness or passivity), harmony (again, this did not necessarily mean absence of conflict), balance, kinship, and respect" (1986, 206). Harmony requires recognition and acceptance of the interconnectedness of all life, that we are a part of the "sacred hoop" of life and that we have a place and function within it. Balance requires that the demands of individuals are balanced by the demands of the community/group. One can not be expressed without the other. Societal constraints upon individuals are not meant to confine individuals or make them conform, but to enhance and support the uniqueness of every individual within the supportive context of the community. It is the balance and flow between oneself and one's sense of community which expresses the essential relationship/kinship with, and respect for, all life. When one of these elements breaks down so too may the others. Without dignity and respect for the individual, without an emphasis on the necessity for balance and harmony between each one of the parts, the harmony and unique wholeness of the larger community is impaired. What is essential is the realization of the interconnectedness, the relationship of life; that without individuals there is no community, and without community the value and strength of individuals and their ability to relate is diminished. By sharing our stories, we build bridges of communication with another; by listening we show our respect for the dignity of others and simultaneously affirm our own individuality while celebrating our commonality and community.
Ed McGaa Mother Earth Spirituality (1990) - Also focuses on basic
values noted above. Value of relationship between four colors: red, black,
yellow, white (+green - mother earth; and blue - father sky). Ritual significance
of four: ages; things that crawl, fly, two legged, four legged etc. Mitakuye
Oyasin - we are all related. Discusses Native American (Lakota) perspective
in terms of seven sacred ceremonial events:
Significance of Shamanic Perspective.
Shamanism is a very old, coherent, broadly diffused mental paradigm; draws its powers of persistence from its capacity to organize knowledge about the world by way of a simple set of symbols and assumptions. Premises: (a) spiritual force that all humans experience is ambient, of the world, cosmos and everything in it; birth, death, illustrate capacity of spirit to move thru material forms. Are two ways to view divine: as a transcendent Creator out there (Eurocentric/Western view) or as an immanent creation potentially manifest everywhere (shamanic view); (b) shamanism can function as guide in complex societies as a way or organizing knowledge about the world which can help us meet the challenge of rethinking our relationship to the lifesystem that spawned us all (From: Freidel, Schele, & Parker, 1993, Maya Cosmos, Three Thousand Years on the Shaman's Path, pp.12-13).
Langdon's discussion of shamanism and anthropology (key for Eliade, significance of estatic state/shamanic trance) - focus on various forms and expressions as dynamic cultural-social complex in various societies; notes issues of concern - debates re: psychic stability of shamans, effectiveness of role in therapy, problems in defining as form of magic or religion. Importance of symbolic anthropological perspective (work of Geertz, Turner, Douglas etc.) in understanding nature and functions of shamanism, concern with symbolic representations in ideological systems and rituals as well as their relationship to society and human motivation. Notes that a key concept of many shamanic systems is concept of power which enables shaman to mediate between extrahuman and human and legitimizes his/her various social roles w/in society. South American shaman's power illustrated in mastery of estatic state leading to the acquisition of auxiliary spirits and songs. (From: Langdon, E Jean Matteson, 1992. "Shamanism and Anthropology". In Langdon, E.J.M. and G. Baer, Eds., Portals of Power:, Shamanism in South America Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, pp. 1-24)
Harner's main points: significance of cognicentrism; nature of non-ordinary reality and means of approaching it (OSC v.s. SSC); characteristics of core shamanism that define his approach. Includes major features of the shamanic journey, significance of power animals, methods of merging with spirit allies along with techniques used to restore power (soul retrieval ceremonies) and extract harmful intrusions. (From: Harner, M., 1990. The Way of the Shaman. New York: Harper and Row).
DIVINATION EXERCISE (from Basic Workshop with Harner, 10/31/92)
Using the rock one has chosen, state one's intention/question to be addressed. Rock has 4 sides, focus on top and bottom (2 sides). (1) Look for 4 images on each side. Note them quickly TOP: e.g. arrowhead, teepee, pyramid, mountaintop; (2) Second part is to ask what each image means: ask the question .."In this field, my career will be....What does the arrowhead say....because of the point, will be a leader.. ..teepee says because is a circle will be spiritual.. .. pyramid says in this field my career will be full of energy.. ...mountaintop says strive to reach the top to teach others.
Do the bottom of the rock the same way. Do both sides quickly, then review and summarize learning from each side that one has received.
Question: What is my next step on the shamanic path?
Top
(1) Woman - says I need to work with women
(2) Otter - says I need to do fun things, play, don't take things too seriously
(3) Fox - says follow the path/trail in the woods, is clever, daring, intuitive
(4) Owl says teach the path of wisdom (teaching women's way of knowing)
Bottom
(1) Diamond shape (4 corners) - worthy crystal, says way of 4 directions, path worthy to follow
(2) Bird flying, - hawk far seeing, says path is far seeing
(3) Bear face - strength, endurance, to "bear" it, time to hibernate, reflect, dream
(4) Butterfly - says path is a process of metamorphosis, transformation, flitting freely
Summary
Working with women in nature, sharing path of wisdom, farseeing/foretelling, strength to endure, dream and reflect -- leads to metamorphosis