What does it mean to live a shamanic life? This is an inquiry I'll be approaching in many different ways throughout my blogs and podcasts. For me, it's akin to asking what does it mean to be fully human. Through these writings, navigating both the opportunities as well as limits of language, I invite you to explore a state of consciousness and way of being in the world that has been fundamental to humans living in sane balance across the planet for many tens of thousands of years.
Living shamanically is a re-membering, a way of coming home to your unconditioned self. A shamanic state of consciousness can help you relax into innate, natural states of being while concurrently attuning you to the ever-changing flow of Life. To live shamanically means relying more on your sensual perceptions and intuitions, cultivating trust in your vulnerability, acting in the moment on the inspiration of your courageous heart and allowing Mystery to be your life companion and guide. This way of walking on the Earth values stillness and deep inner listening as essential to clarity of mind and right action. Shamanic experience promotes the understanding that all form begins in the formless, and so great attention is given the life of Spirit and to the act of creating balance, harmony and beauty within the Self in order to sustain peaceful, thriving relationship with others; as within, so without. It is singing and dancing, story-telling and laughing, grieving and celebrating, birthing and shedding. It is honoring the Ancestors, dreaming the lives to come, and preparing the way. And the shamanic template for all of this is the presence and evolution of one's spirit in conscious, embodied relationship to a vast Web of Life that mostly doesn't use human speech; relating through the meta-elixir of Eros to all forms of life.
A shamanic life is also a path of direct revelation from sources that are not bound by time, space and causality. What amazing perplexities and opportunities this proffers! How do we discern truth on this path? How do we cooperate with "other" truths? What is right action on an individual level...a group level... or a species level, when the greater matrix of healthy Earth energies are seriously considered? How do we maintain a courageous, joyful heart that can share the gifts we were born to express that are so needed in this world while also being sensitively attuned to and even participant in the gestalt of global suffering? These are good questions...... While formal shamanism may teach that there are certain things that are "true", for example: that the soul needs to have all its lost parts returned in order to be whole and fully empowered; it also leads us by its very nature to push the edges of what it says IS and IS NOT; to challenge the known and assumed and familiar. And that is the most rewarding, real and beautiful place of all: traveling to that edge and being willing to move without itinerary, tether or expectation into the rich Void to align with one's true creative power, which is an ever-constant, evolving process within an ordinary shamanic life.
Although clarity of mind is very important from a shamanic perspective, modern life is almost singularly mentally oriented and a shamanic life simply is not. Consequently, language about this felt experience can sometimes mislead as well as clarify. And though I'm not a writer, I'm taking it on because people put their attention in words so often that I want to meet you here, not only to affirm your inherent Beauty but to encourage you to really live what your body and spirit are made for--to fulfill your soul's purpose, as it is something so powerful and needed in this world! To do this I would rather you listen patiently to Bear's slow breath in her winter den....or watch wondrously for Salmon's erotic blush as s/he prepares to spawn and die....or still yourself enough to the rhythm of the humble flower whose brief life at the edge of the meadow is attuned to yours and has something to share that just might break your heart with its profound beauty or lift your spirit with its captivating joy. But we mostly don't "live" there in those places, do we? We tend to live here, in the often rushing, confusing symbols of language and sometimes ponderous, labyrinthine mental states or skittering discursive thought. Meanwhile...the stars are spinning in their courses, radiating their bright energies......
So, since we're starting here, I will try to use that mind and those thoughts, as well as that representational language, as a beginning to then hopefully shape-shift our explorations just a bit more into a sensuous movement.... or a wandering song; more into intimate relationship rather than mere exchange of generic symbols; as well as to illuminate ways of deeply relating to presences both seen and unseen, to those spirits---or forms of consciousness---who can expand what we feel is possible within our humanity and bring to us what's needed to free ourselves from the restrictive, illusory and often toxic thought-forms of this Age into our rightful creative presence as powerful, timeless beings of awareness and love.
And so... you can step out in the fresh morning and feel the presence of this Earth, hear how her heart is beating and sense it's a music your own body intimately recognizes. And then...the Door of Life opens, and...., you just know........