latest NASA Earth
photo
THERE IS A PREDOMINANT belief that shamanism is an old way,
and “ancient way” that may or may not have value for modern life, depending on
one’s point of view. There
is a sense that a “return” to Old Ways is either of value—more authentic
“original thought”—or a misguided fantasy.
Such a belief is just that—a belief—when in reality there
really neither old nor new when it comes to human development. Human life is still very young in the
evolution of the Earth, having appeared only in the last flashes of the history
of the Earth.
“Old ways” are replete with superstition, prejudice, and
even a sanctioned presence for
murder [e.g., an especially high murder rate among young men as a
response to injustice]. Illness
and death might be skewed toward perceptions of having offended the spirits or
hexing by enemies. And “new
post-modern, cybernetic ways” may not really be an improvement and continue
this prejudice in different clothing.
Still, old ways can offer some rich emotional technologies that are
expressed in activities such as listening to stone, presence/identity in stars,
and taking/desiring less in material things. And the material technology of “new ways” can offer deeper
subtlety, such as micro- and macro- and astro perspectives that are still only
just beginning to open.
In such a context, living shamanism has always been and
continues to remain “no-thought,” a process of “seeking more than knowing and
interpreting,” connecting, and entering.
This is essentially a wordless strategy that aspires to be
non-conceptual and be a method of access rather than an answer—a method of
remaining in contact.
The deepest poetry is beyond words. “Plants speaking” is conceptual, and
across the long run perhaps appealing in the sense of hearing answers or
information, yet facile at best.
But the drum sound or grinding a small stone in a circle on a larger
tundra boulder or looking into a stone or into burnt wood can open. It opens, not by getting an answer as
much as challenging conceptualization.
Shamanism that becomes culturally shared is likely no longer shamanism,
but rather has become a motif in a cultural religious or medicinal practice—an element
of a belief system. The snake
means this… and the plant says this and does that…
Shamanism knows nothing. It is perhaps a pulse or a repetitive act or a calming and
stilling, turning these sensations into gateways. We want answers, but the authentic “warrior” practice
involves existence in an unanswerable context.
“Plant says this to me.” Good luck with that.
Shamanism says human life in any era is wild, and the essence of
wildness is the capacity to remain alert.
No more than this. And this
capacity to remain alert (which implies a movement toward coming into balance
or “fitted-ness” is a wondrous dance that is more than enough to ask.
Alertness is an experience of which all living events have
some degree of consciousness. It
is present at the bird feeder and in the growth of a plant and even in the
seasonal rock of the Earth in its star-dance. Cultural life can be convinced that it has answers, but all
of the clear views of reality proposed by a thousand human cultures are soon
overturned. Stars that are gods
dissolve to galaxies to a universe in perhaps multiverses and what is
that. If anything is known, it is
perhaps that you and I are really not you and I but rather an expression of
all, and all itself—more the dazzling, miraculous appearance of all in this
place in this moment.
Shamanism does say in a strong way that we need the
Earth. We need modernist Henry
Beston’s “fire before the hands” [The Outermost House], and we need an indigenous sense of mitakuye
oyasin—“all my relations” that is
heartfelt, and perhaps not unlike Siddhartha’s experience of dropping off self
and the discovery of E=mc2 or DNA.
A feral return to a pastoral is a concept, and a link of
sound with charkas to heal is the same.
It is an attempt to break the barrier, but a facile waste of life. But sitting down with a steady pulse or
stillness and a heartbeat can be revelatory.
So, teaching shamanism might begin with a drum pulse and
largely stay there, and when words are introduce, they are used to tell us what
not to do rather than what to do, (1) in order to reduce the repetition of
same-old romantic pitfalls, (2) to criticize what we have come to sense that
shamanism is or science or the high life of poetry or cyber-technology is.
There is an enduring dimension of human experience that is,
essentially, the enduring experience of human wildness—something that seems
impossible, something that we have left behind in modernity.
Old is not, in itself, better, but there was this beautiful
view of the wide-open star-full sky then.
And new is not, in itself, the clarified, finally anti-superstitious way
forward.
So sit down, perhaps with sound in an urban basement, or
after two days of solo camping under the stars, and listen.
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