artist: Rajewel
Crossing thresholds---dying to old ways of being and coming alive to new visions and aspects of awareness--- are common themes in a shamanic life. Working in close, consistent relationship with the helping spirits attunes you to their vibration, which is unconditioned. Because we tend to live mostly from conditioned thoughts, habits, emotional patterns and dogmas, becoming more detached from conditioning is revolutionary and tends to introduce a sense of free-fall and sometimes chaos into one's life. Who am I now? is often the underlying sense, and it's important to not listen to what kind of answer you might get from the general culture or to the first well-worn thoughts that rise in your mind, but to look instead to the soft pulse of your own heartful intuition and the trans-rational invitations of spirit guidance. Hence, ritual is an important act for passing thresholds within a shamanic centered life. It brings form, greater awareness, grace within the mystery, and support to what is changing and thus helps to anchor and stabilize it without crushing what is new and tender in the vise of habitual thinking.
And just to once again state a caveat; a shamanic centered life does not mean being a shaman. A shamanic centered life is first of all animistic; it honors the aliveness and spirit of all beings whether tree or rock, salmon or human, fungi or weasel. All life is experienced and known to be inspirited and to have its own respected path and purpose that is not simply a reflection of human need or desire. What distinguishes the shamanic aspect from animism is the practice of intentionally shifting one's consciousness into a trance state in order to receive insight, guidance or healing energies from the spirit realms as well as to communicate, praise, express gratitude and collaborate with the spirit aspects of benevolent hon-human beings in creating this world.
So in future posts or audio files I'll discuss the act of crossing thresholds and the beautiful way of rituals and how to make them meaningful and powerful, especially for those of you who have no strong lineage-based rituals available or that feel relevant. Ending now with a beautiful writing about the experience of crossing thresholds from the Irish poet John O'Donohue:
"At any time you can ask yourself: At which threshold am I now standing? At this time in my life, what am I leaving? Where am I about to enter? What is preventing me from crossing my next threshold? What gift would enable me to do it? A threshold is not a simple boundary; it is a frontier that divides two different territories, rhythms, and atmospheres. Indeed, it is a lovely testimony to the fullness and integrity of an experience or stage of life that it intensifies toward the end into a real frontier that cannot be crossed without the heart being passionately engaged and woken up. At this threshold a great complexity of emotion comes alive: confusion, fear, excitement, sadness, hope.
This is one of the reasons such vital crossings were always clothed in ritual. It is wise in your own life to be able to recognize and acknowledge the key thresholds: to take your time; to feel all the varieties of presence that accrue there; to listen inward with complete attention until you hear the inner voice calling you forward. The time has come to cross."