Copyright Lance Kinseth, Blue Fire II: Shaman's Journey, 20"x24, 2002
MANY PRACTICES AND BELIEFS can be associated with shamanism
to the degree that the term “shamanism” becomes nearly meaningless. Like “spirit” and “soul” and
“being-ness,” “shamanism” has become an inclusive, encompassing term rather
than a distinguishing term, and sort of a "pop" term. That
is likely because it touches many aspects of human life, especially those naturalist aspects for which we continue to hunger and to connect with, involving aspects of
modern life that go unrecognized as having anything to do with “primitive”
shamanism.
Shaman’s Grace argues
that there is a dimension of human experience that occurs in every society in
every era that involves attending to an enduring wild state, wherein human life
continues to be primarily creatural rather than cultural or social or
psychological. From the emergence of human life [species sapiens] to the most post-industrial cybernetic moment, shamanism has
proffered a way to "see in the dark"—a way to touch something deep inside us,
which is rock-firm reality, that listens to the changing conditions of existence while we are half-awake
in our everyday. Seemingly
primitive and superstitious, shamanism is a core yet effusive aspect of modern
medicine, art, psychotherapy, and science. But to most of the modern world, shamanism describes
practices found in Third World developing nations and Fourth World indigenous
societies that are superstitious and manipulative. And to a very real extent, that is true. They are not stuck in the primal as much as "modern," but utilizing the resources that are available to them.
Shaman’s Grace
focuses on an enduring fundamental experience that is quickly co-opted into
derivative forms, both explicit traditional and hidden modern expressions, that
reinforce culture, that are manipulative and superstitious, rather than that
challenge culture.
This more “fundamental [un-co-opted] shamanism” is increasingly of value in a now peopled Earth with no vast
frontiers. This is co-opting of
fundamental experience is common to all experience, including our most rational
scientific measures, but is especially present in addressing “spiritual” experience. Religions continually undergo "reformation," and so science, and our most practical, everyday routines. Now, each decade--not each century--is radically altered.
Shaman’s Grace
describes a fundamental enduring human response that is present
in any society in any era that is distinguished from the popular association of
shamanism as a derivative indigenous practice
of contacting spirits and strengthening self. Its methods are the conscious expression of an enduring wild
state that aspires to align us with the vast conditions of existence that have
designed us, and that continue to design us.
In this fundamental
shamanism, all experiences that optimize human life are envisioned to be, astonishingly, a
creatural process—rather than a psychological or cultural process. And shamanism focuses on the central
human characteristic of imagination.
Every second of human life involves a stream of imagination. Imagination uses momentary experiences
to aspire to access billions-years-old experiences that are contained within
our eloquent physiological-eco design.
Like scientific inquiry, this fundamental shamanism requires a self-critical
approach, with the expectation that layers of cultural bias must be looked for,
rather a trust that one’s "shamanic experiences" are somehow exempt from scrutiny, and automatically
authentic. We are anthropocentric,
presuming that we have come into the Earth and will leave it in death, and in
this sense, we—in our most post-industrial, cybernetic essence--remain “primitive”
or perhaps “ignorant,” or perhaps—more-accurately—neonatal [more accurate:
neotenic], in our development as a species. We are "nasty" in our sense of import, killing both the human and the natural world. For all of our modernity, we remain so very, very young in the history of the Earth, as well as
fragile. We have barely appeared in geo-time, and are at risk of disappearing far to fast.
Shamanism is a method far more than a belief system, a practice
of using deep imagination to touch the imaginal—something profoundly deep and authentic rather than something
imaginary, in the sense of being fantasy or wished-for-to integrate with the
natural process of the Earth and cosmos.
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