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I was listening to Carolyn Myss the other night, and she said (paraphrased) That she never knew anyone who transformed without going through madness first. That madness is an essential step in growth (her degree so many decades ago was in the mystical experience of schizophrenia).
Do you ever find you learn more by teaching?
Yes! And, in fact, I am learning that “teaching” or “guiding” is an essential part of learning. I’m getting ready for a major Ceremony next month, and it is requiring me to dig into my depths of experience – I want to deliver with confidence. If I am informal in our monthly sessions at the yoga studio, I feel the need to be rock solid for this Ceremony, as it is a Gift to a dear friend, as well as a Prayer for Transformation & Growth for myself. (see madness quote above!)
Chapter 8 – Ally’s Secret
Coda writes:you only have access to two or three senses at a time (seeing, hearing, and smelling). But through practice, you can attain the ability to sense movement and connect through your body’s intent and bring in more of your senses.
This has come up for me a few times in the past week. About Mindfulness. I’ve caught myself thinking, thinking, thinking (and so, as Jon Kabat-Zinn exhorts: I say the words, “thinking, thinking, thinking” in order to let go of thinking. It seems counter-intuitive, but it works). In Dennis Lewis’ “Natural Breathing” program, he talks about awareness beyond the mind.
We so focus on the material, and even when we don’t focus on the material realm, we get caught in our mind, thinking, thinking, thinking. The Natural Breathing program takes you to a level of Mindfulness and concentration where the mind is just another function of body. Jon Kabat-Zinn talks of this, too.
When you get to that level of meditative and mindful awareness, you receive knowledge and information that is Beyond the mind. This may be where paranormal abilities take place. It may even be a sort of shamanic altered states – I’ve heard talk of people who access the Akashic (archetypal) Records this way.
As you let go of mind, as you go beyond thinking, thinking, your senses become more present and alert, and you can become aware of things which are behind you, or beyond a wall, or access insights that are intuitive leaps that your rational mind could not make, if you were stuck in thinking, thinking.
It’s like Middle World Travel without the journey – like Middle World Awareness.
Mindell’s story of finding the woman’s breast cancer is a crystal clear example of this type of awareness.
As you (and Mindell) talked about Death awareness, and the Dance of Death – I am reminded how Practice is a DAILY dance with your Soul.
Nobody else can do your Practice for you. Nobody can meditate for you, or do your yoga, or still your thoughts, or relax your body. Your daily Practice is a daily opportunity to Dance with your Own Soul. As you learn more about your Soul, you learn to look forward to it, and “oh, I have to meditate,” or “I have to pray” or “I have to do yoga,” becomes, “I will dance with my soul in sitting meditation,” or “I will engage my Soul as I move my body,” and is a thing to look forward to, a place of bliss – even when it is challenging. For what a miraculous opportunity it is, to have this dance, this conversation, this engagement with G-d within yourself!
I’ve read and re-read your review of Chapter 8, and I still don’t get “Battle with the Ally.” For me, the Ally, or Helper is a blissful supportive thing, not requiring surrender (other than to “the other realm, which is often a battle for ordinary consciousness at best, and surrender of judgement – acceptance), or battle. The Ally comes – like your own Helpers – in love and a desire to help you be your best self.
There is often a battle in the Anima/Animus, as we resist the Other, and a battle in the Shadow, as we integrate our Darkness, and a battle in the Shamanic Death, where we shed Ego and realise that we are Beyond Ego and learn to identify with the Greater Self. That feels like word salad, but those are the Shamanic battles (in my experience). If there is something there that speaks to you, perhaps we can explore it further.
I have never battled an Ally. The Ally is my Support and Power, the gift given to me by G-d, and the gifts which I share with others.
I strongly sense that Mindell is mixing his metaphors – his Shamanism and Psychology. When he says Ally – I say Shadow or Daimon. It is true, when you Integrate the Shadow or befriend the Daimon, you gain great power, and you do shed the ego and surrender to That Which is Greater than Yourself. This is Jacob battling the Angel, after which point he is Blessed (father of many Nations) and cursed (physically lamed).
Was the Angel an Ally or an Adversary? If you read my notes about Shadow above, I feel very strongly that is what Mindell is talking about when he uses the word “Ally.”
Casteneda had a plant Ally – the “little smoke” or datura. In the story, he had to “tame” the Ally, using ceremony and cultivation, Practices and initiations. I think this may be why Mindell associates the Ally with the Shadow. Cultivating a poisonous plant ally is a challenging path, indeed (and not one which I recommend!).
Chapter 9 – The Double
Mindell cites an example in the Aztec myth of Tezcatlipoca, which means “smoking mirror”. This is a reflection of “the face that fights him”
David Carson and Jamie Sams write about Smoking Mirror in Sacred Path Cards. Here is my interpretation or impression of what they wrote:
40 – Great Smoking Mirror – Reflections
In the Great Smoking Mirror, you see reflections of yourself, and learn from them.
This is a Mayan teaching, also taught by Cheyenne and Pawnee.
The Mayans say, “I am another one of Yourself.”
The Yogis says “Namaste – the God in me Greets the God in You”
We are all emanations form the Original Source.
Separation is an illusion of this emanation into manifestation. We think we are separated because we split into different bodies, but we are all still One. Each of us is a unique expression of One.
The Great Smoking Mirror allows us to see the reflections of ourSelf in Others. When you see through the illusion of separation – the smoke – you shatter the illusion with the Light of Realization.
If you shatter a mirror into a million pieces, it is all still One – and each mirror reflects back to you a piece of that. Every person you meet is another reflection of the One, and another reflection of yourSelf.
Every life-form holds a solution in equal part to the wholeness. We need each other, even when we don’t like each other. Maybe especially when we don’t like each other, as opposites are needed to re-form the whole.
The only way to resolve opposites is to strive for personal wholeness.
The best way to change others is to change ourselves, and our relationship to others. This is no time to point a finger at others – others are your mirrors, you look in others to learn what you like and don’t like about yourself.
Compassion and forgiveness are key. And forgiving yourself comes first.
Then, look for similarities, rather than differences when viewing others. Answers to your questions are reflected to every seeker in a different way.
You are what you decide you are. Remove the smoke screen that hides your natural talents, and stand tall. You have great potential, but you need to separate your potential from the illusion of smoke and expectations.
The story told there – may be the same one, as it is also from MesoAmerica:
Story: Mountain Rain was a Mayan healer, who was disturbed by the blood sacrifices of the Jaguar Priesthood. She knew that the Sky God, the Ancient One, had never required these sacrifices before. But the people of Tikal accepted what the Priests said, and started to carry out their grisly plans.
She went to find others who believed like she did, and found the Temple of the Double-headed Serpent, the healing temple. Her mind flashed upon her Ancient Grandmother who had taught the women of these temple to use the Great Smoking Mirror.
She carried a bowl to the Jaguar Priests, and wove smoke over the liquid inside, so that the Priests saw themselves, the the awful sacrifices they were seeking. The vision changed the men, and they behaved in wild, unbearable ways. The people then saw that the priests were compromised and corrupt, and banned them.
The mirror talks to me about the lessons we learn in relationships. If I find I am judging you for something, it also means I am judging myself for that thing. In relationship, it is a mirror to our personality, and I learn from you how to be a better person.
In this way, everyone we come into contact with, is an Ally: 2 legged, 4 legged, winged, stone, plant, tree, water, air, earth and fire. Everything which crosses our path is a mirror to us and holds lessons and secrets for us, if we are only willing to be Mindful and Listen (Dadirri – an aboriginal word for “deep listening.”)
We dream in symbols that reflect our and our friends and colleagues’ unconscious.
I’ve found that this is 2 sides of a coin. It may actually involve a friend, family or colleague’s unconscious, a secret or Truth that will help them learn and grow. But this Dreaming also represents your view of that friend, family member or colleague.
You dream about a coworker sitting on a throne. But when you step up to the throne it is made of paper and crumbles.
This might mean that your coworker is harbouring false delusions, but it also might mean that you “see through” the empire they have built, and find it insufficient. There are always 2 sides to the coin: Their state of being, and your perception of it. It’s true in physics, and it is true in Dreams.
Mindell writes, “If you were hurt as a child, parts of your childlike nature are split off and appear only in dreams. . . . You may have put all of your animal nature away if the people who brought you up were afraid of their own instincts.” (p. 127)
Yes, but I think of these as Shadows (again).
The Double to me is a concept that I know of as the Fylgia or Fetch. This is a part of yourself that you send out to effect your Will. It is far less passive, not a “victim” at all, it is your focused Will and Intent projected out into the world to effect a result.
The Fylgia is often used in healings – when you send a part of your awareness into another. It is used in Far Seeing – like when you visited my house. It is available for Astral Travel, and it is used in Shamanic Journeys.
One description of the Fetch is here:
Each bit of awareness can create thought forms or fetches. This is an advanced magickal practice in one sense but ordinary in another sense. When you are trying to remember something and can’t you are really sending out mental energy as a thought form or fetch. It was created to bring back that memory or bit of information you desired. Later some time during the day or even the next day when you are busy doing something else you suddenly remember what it was. The fetch returned with the desired information. This common phenomenon is what magickal thought forms and fetches are really about. It is simply done in a deliberate manner with different types of energies and astral bodies.
I think this might be what Mindell is getting to with the Physics (and time travel), but I need to read over that part more slowly to take it in.
I do know that accomplished shamans are able to work backwards and forwards in time, we can look at the distant past, or the future. I’m not sure how well we can effect change in those cycles, but we can at least observe them and uplift. Sandra Ingerman says that she & her practitioners did some experiments about Journeying into the future, to find out about “how they heal” in the future. She was pleased to report that humanity does seem to have a future, and that it seems more pleasant than our present. Panthera has captured some futuristic experiences in her Upper World Journeys, as well.
However, by spending more time focusing and learning the secondary processes, you can shed your normal identity and “the moment you do that, your dreamingbody becomes the base reality, which seems to dream up your ordinary world in order to realize itself.”
This sounds a lot like the Second Attention, as discussed by Casteneda (in later books) and in Toltec wisdom. The Second Attention is the attention beyond the bug on the leaf. The First Attention is the bug on the leaf, but the Second Attention sees the light and life force within the leaf, the atoms dancing as the leaf is nourished from water, soil and air. The Second Attention knows that the “bug” is a cricket and it is bringing a message. Dadirri allows you to hear that message, Mindfulness allows you to heed it.
I was listening to Carolyn Myss the other night, and she said (paraphrased) That she never knew anyone who transformed without going through madness first. That madness is an essential step in growth (her degree so many decades ago was in the mystical experience of schizophrenia).
This is incredible. I think there’s so much truth to this. It’s unfortunate that those who do go mad are often locked up and drugged. It’s no wonder we’re only a few decades away from our own self-annihilation.
Yes! And, in fact, I am learning that “teaching” or “guiding” is an essential part of learning. I’m getting ready for a major Ceremony next month, and it is requiring me to dig into my depths of experience – I want to deliver with confidence. If I am informal in our monthly sessions at the yoga studio, I feel the need to be rock solid for this Ceremony, as it is a Gift to a dear friend, as well as a Prayer for Transformation & Growth for myself. (see madness quote above!)
I hope all went well with the ceremony.
As you let go of mind, as you go beyond thinking, thinking, your senses become more present and alert, and you can become aware of things which are behind you, or beyond a wall, or access insights that are intuitive leaps that your rational mind could not make, if you were stuck in thinking, thinking.
It’s like Middle World Travel without the journey – like Middle World Awareness.
Mindell’s story of finding the woman’s breast cancer is a crystal clear example of this type of awareness.
I found Dr. Mindell’s writings on how to “let go of personal history” to be crucial to learning how to stop the “thinking, thinking, thinking.”
I’ve had problems in the past with ruminating thoughts and obsessive worrying, but the techniques learned from Dr. Mindell on letting go of personal history really helped.
It was like laying down a sort of worry-burden. I just let it go . . . .
I hope that gives way, as I continue practicing and learning, to be able to access these types of awareness experiences that you and Dr. Mindell’s book explore.
As you learn more about your Soul, you learn to look forward to it, and “oh, I have to meditate,” or “I have to pray” or “I have to do yoga,” becomes, “I will dance with my soul in sitting meditation,” or “I will engage my Soul as I move my body,” and is a thing to look forward to, a place of bliss – even when it is challenging. For what a miraculous opportunity it is, to have this dance, this conversation, this engagement with G-d within yourself!
I like this, it’s like you turned the ordinary, work-themed into a dance of poetry.
I’ve read and re-read your review of Chapter 8, and I still don’t get “Battle with the Ally.” For me, the Ally, or Helper is a blissful supportive thing, not requiring surrender (other than to “the other realm, which is often a battle for ordinary consciousness at best, and surrender of judgement – acceptance), or battle. The Ally comes – like your own Helpers – in love and a desire to help you be your best self.
I strongly sense that Mindell is mixing his metaphors – his Shamanism and Psychology. When he says Ally – I say Shadow or Daimon. It is true, when you Integrate the Shadow or befriend the Daimon, you gain great power, and you do shed the ego and surrender to That Which is Greater than Yourself. This is Jacob battling the Angel, after which point he is Blessed (father of many Nations) and cursed (physically lamed).
I’m still struggling with these concepts and I don’t know nearly enough to really understand a lot of this, but the next chapter, chapter 14, goes into deeper meaning for the Allies and I’ll explore that when I type of what I’ve written for that chapter tonight.
The Allies, from Mindell’s perspective can be helpers even if they are foes in certain ways. It’s the gain from the struggle that forms the Ally.
If you shatter a mirror into a million pieces, it is all still One – and each mirror reflects back to you a piece of that. Every person you meet is another reflection of the One, and another reflection of yourSelf.
Every life-form holds a solution in equal part to the wholeness. We need each other, even when we don’t like each other. Maybe especially when we don’t like each other, as opposites are needed to re-form the whole.
I LOVE the metaphor of the mirror. So beautiful. It makes it so much easier to understand. Thanks so much for writing it out.
Chapter 14
The DeathwalkI needed to walk away from Mindell’s book for several weeks in order to be able to gather my thoughts and approach this chapter.
I had debated leaving the book altogether, as I feared this chapter just from the title.
But I’m so glad I returned because it wasn’t at all what I thought.
I’m still processing it, but here are some key concepts and quotes:
Mindell writes about how the shaman, the warrior, can return to “real life” after encountering the nagual and after surviving such experiences that leave him alienated from those around him.
Anyone who’s had such an experience can relate. I know I can and I’m sure anyone led to this website can relate, as well.
Mindell cautions anyone who returns to the “real world” to “follow the definitions of normal human behavior and repress perceptions that lie outside this definition.” p. 201.
Mindell takes the reader through the narrative of the individual and opens up into the collective, the micro-level to the macro-level.
He writes, “An enlightened jury would have to reason that if the town kills one of its citizens, it only succeeds in destroying his body. The voice and message carried by that warrior cannot be killed. New ideas and ways of living are more vast and more permanent than the people who speak them. The ideas will haunt the town in its dreams long after the warrior has died. In this way, the voices of the past continue today as roles in the present, parts that are needed for the sake of collective wholeness. This is why witchcraft, shamanism, and, I hope, indigenous life can never be completely destroyed.” p. 204
Mindell reminds us, “To survive the deathwalk, you must be both vulnerable and invisible.” p. 205
It is in our differences that give rise to allies. Mindell writes about unsung grassroots heroes who have passed in relative obscurity, or so it seems. Mindell writes, “Their allies have appeared as physical or social disabilities, homosexuality, color differences, forbidden loves, madness, and poetry. I think of single parents and of lonely artists trying to express the impossible. And others have lived their fates through to the moment of death without the support of anyone besides their own dreaming process. . . . But what would really honor the memory of these people would be our realization that those small changes that occurred because of their struggle touch everyone today, because they are preset everywhere, at all times, in the network of connections.” p. 207
This is a difficult chapter to process, but I like the way he moves from the micro-level to the macro-level and the tie-in with climate change and the need to form community as opposed to isolated individualism.
As Mindell writes, “The global viewpoint that you are everyone who has ever broken a rule may enable you to survive. The jury, which fights for the ways things have been, has also always been here. Moreover, not only are you on trial, but so is all of humanity that has broken environmental rules. You are living in a world that itself is on trial So remind your potential executioners that they, too, have run out of time. As human beings thrash about for solutions to the overwhelming and apparently unsolvable planetary problems they have created, nature is aiming at the human species, just as the jury aims at the warrior.” p. 204 – 205
In Mindell’s analogies, there are many kinds of deathwalks – childhood fights, teenage rebellion, forbidden love affairs, midlife crisis, being afraid of illness and death. All of these are a kind of deathwalk.
And finally, we have set nature on a course of a deathwalk with the planet. We need to be fluid, to let go of our own history without forgetting it’s hauntings, to learn from it and find ways to adapt to new realities, if we are to survive. And yes, we need to be vulnerable and alive, warriors at the individual level, but ultimately collective.
This reminds me of a Thich Nhat Hanh quote:
“It is probable that the next Buddha will not take the form of an individual. The next Buddha may take the form of a community, a community practicing understanding and loving kindness, a community practicing mindful living. This may be the most important thing we can do for the survival of the earth.” ~ Thich Nhat Hanh (A Peaceful Way)
And this brings us to the final chapter of the book, which I hope to write about next weekend.
Hey Coda –
don’t ever feel obligated – your contributions here are invaluable, and I appreciate every word you write. If it ever becomes a chore or a burden, then it’s not meant to be!You wrote (of Mindell):
Mindell cautions anyone who returns to the “real world” to “follow the definitions of normal human behavior and repress perceptions that lie outside this definition.” p. 201.
This brings me to mind of the “Psychedelic Book of the Dead,” adapted from the Tibetan Book of the Dead by Timothy Leary. It’s available as “The Psychedelic Experience: A Manual Based on the Tibetan Book of the Dead.” While it is listed as a psychedelic manual – for states induced by taking psychedelics – I have found it to be most useful for Walking Between the Worlds, Shamanic States of Non-Ordinary Consciousness, or even (as the medical profession would call it) psychosis.
In the Third Bardo descriptions are given to guide you from the non-ordinary reality or ego-loss, back into ordinary reality. The amazing shamanic power of this is that – upon re-entry, you can choose what ego to manifest in, choose what personality traits to pick up, and which ones to leave behind. There are Shadows and pitfalls as you re-enter ordinary reality.
I’m glad that you are planning to read this book, as it is very poetic, and offers tools and viewpoints for shifting from this reality to another, and back again.
Again, I am unsure of Mindell’s terminology. In Casteneda, the nagual is the sorcerer who has the power to shape-change. Mindell seems to refer to it as the Shadow. I just picked up this book in the USA, and look forward to parsing your descriptions from his.
The Shadow is a great teacher, and to allow the Shadow to teach us, is to Master the lessons to prevent subterfuge and sabotage by the Shadow. If we won’t learn from the Shadow directly, it will find ways to teach us “the hard way,” (what I frequently call “coyote lessons.”)
In returning to ordinary consciousness, it does become important to conform to the behaviour of the social mind, even if you don’t believe in the social constructs anymore. When in Rome…
In non-ordinary consciousness, you shift from the social mind, and hopefully towards the egoless state (as described in the Second Bardo of the Book of the Dead), where you shed the conditioning – and trauma – that was put on you by your tribe. This can be deeply healing, and deeply confusing if you cannot get confirmation for your egoless state.
“But what would really honor the memory of these people would be our realization that those small changes that occurred because of their struggle touch everyone today, because they are preset everywhere, at all times, in the network of connections.” p. 207
I was just listening to a talk by Mark Nepo called “Repeatedly We are Asked” – talking about not the excellence of perfection, but the passion of following our hearts, and in following our hearts deeply and thoroughly we achieve a refinement of ourselves which is equivalent to excellence – and in shining our hearts, like the butterfly wings which beat and cause a giant wave across the ocean, we affect others with our passion and commitment to that passion. He said it like this,
“The pitcher cries for water to be filled.
Is it better to try and perfect the song with practice, or instead, is it better to improve ourselves by the singing of the song?”This was, for me, an excellent merging of the micro (inner) and the macro (other).
And finally, we have set nature on a course of a deathwalk with the planet. We need to be fluid, to let go of our own history without forgetting it’s hauntings, to learn from it and find ways to adapt to new realities, if we are to survive. And yes, we need to be vulnerable and alive, warriors at the individual level, but ultimately collective.
There is another teacher, Francis Weller, who offers a handbook for the art of grieving, “The Wild Edge of Sorrow,” and then takes grief to a new level in “Entering the Healing Ground.” In this second book, she discusses how in many ways, it is too late for our habitat to support us as humans, and what we really need to pursue is not “saving the planet,” but instead, “saving our soul,” in a sort of hospice for the soul of humanity.
I have yet to read these two books, but they are high on my list, as I would like to come to grips with what we have done to Mother Earth, and What’s Next for humanity. I like to believe that something will survive, and so I am committed for the rest of my days to spreading lore in the hopes that some of the Earth Wisdom of the past will find its way into future humanity.
I like the Thich Nhat Hanh quote a lot. He was (through his writings) my first meditation teacher in the 80’s, and I have great respect for his writings, world view, and sense of hope. Together, we can be Buddha. I like this!
Thanks for writing!
This brings me to mind of the “Psychedelic Book of the Dead,” adapted from the Tibetan Book of the Dead by Timothy Leary. It’s available as “The Psychedelic Experience: A Manual Based on the Tibetan Book of the Dead.” While it is listed as a psychedelic manual – for states induced by taking psychedelics – I have found it to be most useful for Walking Between the Worlds, Shamanic States of Non-Ordinary Consciousness, or even (as the medical profession would call it) psychosis.
In the Third Bardo descriptions are given to guide you from the non-ordinary reality or ego-loss, back into ordinary reality. The amazing shamanic power of this is that – upon re-entry, you can choose what ego to manifest in, choose what personality traits to pick up, and which ones to leave behind. There are Shadows and pitfalls as you re-enter ordinary reality.
I’m glad that you are planning to read this book, as it is very poetic, and offers tools and viewpoints for shifting from this reality to another, and back again.
Yes! Thank you so much for recommending this book. I’ve ordered it and look forward to reading it.
Again, I am unsure of Mindell’s terminology. In Casteneda, the nagual is the sorcerer who has the power to shape-change. Mindell seems to refer to it as the shadow. I just picked up this book in the USA, and look forward to parsing your descriptions from his.
I’m still struggling with terminology, so I look forward to your insights.
In non-ordinary consciousness, you shift from the social mind, and hopefully towards the egoless state (as described in the Second Bardo of the Book of the Dead), where you shed the conditioning – and trauma – that was put on you by your tribe. This can be deeply healing, and deeply confusing if you cannot get confirmation for your egoless state.
I’ve had experiences within the landscape of altered states where I knew I was leaving the brain and entering the mind, this as a portal to the soul.
Dr. Mindell’s concept of “losing personal history” was the kind of vocabulary I needed to help put words to the experience. When I lost my memory, I also lost personal history. As I continued on, all of my senses became hyper-aware. It was then I knew I had left the mind, dissolved from the ego, and gone into the soul.
The first times it happened, I was scared at first, because I didn’t know what that was, but then the fear was gone and I was filled with a form of openness, like a running stream or wild galloping horses. I was inside of the world instead of looking from inside of my eyes and I felt it as rhythm, the music of the spheres.
And after working with you and from reading these kinds of books, I’m learning concepts of urban shamanism, including the right words to use to express these experiences.
Not sure how it works for everyone, but that was my experience.
I’m hoping to learn more with the Timothy Leary book.
There is another teacher, Francis Weller, who offers a handbook for the art of grieving, “The Wild Edge of Sorrow,” and then takes grief to a new level in “Entering the Healing Ground.” In this second book, she discusses how in many ways, it is too late for our habitat to support us as humans, and what we really need to pursue is not “saving the planet,” but instead, “saving our soul,” in a sort of hospice for the soul of humanity.
Wow, that looks like a powerful read. I placed it on my “must read” list.
Wait, I looked up these books online and I think Wild Edge of Sorrow is the updated / revised version of Entering the Healing Ground, but please double-check me on this. When I looked at the books on Amazon, Entering the Healing Ground had a note stating “There is a newer edition of this item” and it linked to Wild Edge.
Perhaps we can add this to our books to discuss here on SE? This looks like a phenomenal author.
I like the Thich Nhat Hanh quote a lot. He was (through his writings) my first meditation teacher in the 80’s, and I have great respect for his writings, world view, and sense of hope. Together, we can be Buddha. I like this!
Yes! I also learned a great deal from Thich Nhat Hanh. I belonged to a mindfulness center that used his texts and teachings as a framework for practice.
Thanks for writing!
Thanks for responding! And the book recommendations are awesome. 🙂
Chapter 15
Dreamtime and Cultural ChangeI wish Mindell had STARTED the book with this chapter! It really puts all of his concepts together, and I wish I knew where he was headed when I first started reading this book. The metaphors would have made a lot more sense.
The concept of collective dreaming did not make sense until this chapter.
The chapter starts:
When you survive a deathwalk, you know what it is like for a dream to almost die, for a community to turn against you, for an ethnic group to be tortured. If you do not recognize your own powers, when the country represses the diversity of its citizens, its people use guns in order to dream together.” (p. 211)
But what does it mean “to dream together”? And are there ways of doing so without guns?
Yes, but first, some background information. Mindell writes about the goals of dreaming together:
When we succeed at dreaming together, everyone realizes that we are all responsible for creating and changing culture. It is everyone’s job to witness and investigate the altered states of oppression, pain, rage, and freedom that permeate our groups. We have not alleviated our cultural problems by repressing, avoiding, or ignoring them. (p. 212)
This can happen in many ways. Mindell writes:
You can kill aboriginal people, but you cannot kill dreamtime. In a way, shamanism can never die out. Today, people go to discos and dance themselves into a trance, not only because they need exercise and want entertainment. They are trying to dream together. You watch football games to see the accidental mixed with the impeccable, to dream with thousands of others. When you meet with other people and dreaming does not happen, you get bored and avoid such meetings in the future. You smoke and drink to dream. You take drugs or overeat. You probably even go to restaurants to dream with others. You put on your costume, your nicest clothes, to leave one part and become another part of yourself, to dream with others, even though you may not have identified socially accepted altered states of consciousness (like changing costumes) as a form of dreaming together. (p. 217)
But here is the problem with that. Mindell writes that aboriginal people seek success in happy relationships and in a happy and well community, whereas we in the West seek wealth, fame, and to be good-looking.
We are a broken and empty society and so our collective dreams are broken and empty.
This book was written in 1993, so I’m going to add more modern-day collective dreams:
Binge-watching NetFlix
FaceBook
Over 100,000,000 people are on psychiatric drugs in the first world countriesAll of these are ways we dream together. It’s truly insane. As Mindell writes, “Most cultures have forgotten their indigenous origins.” (p. 212)
Mindell writes about a conference he attended in Russia in 1993 dealing with conflict resolution. There were groups gathered together – from Georgia, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Abkhazia, Ossetia, and Ingushetia – noting this was the first time in history these groups had been in the same room.
Here is his story:
Slowly, one after another, these men and women spoke of the suffering of their people, describing war, poverty, and ongoing racial prejudice. . . . People spoke of terrorists invading their localities; others mentioned the effects of imperialist policies of the ex-Soviet leaders in Moscow, but I could find neither an imperialist nor a terrorist in the room.
I explained that, even though we had been employed by the ex-Soviet Peace Committee to work on these conflicts, imperialism and terrorism were unrepresented spirits in our present community of nations. Since negotiations on the political level were failing, why not dream together? To my immense surprise, I was immediately understood.
People got up to play and stood in places set aside for the three spirits: the imperialist, the terrorist, and the victimized community. A dramatic tension had filled the room, when suddenly everything exploded into roars of laughter. I almost fell over backward in shock when these dignified women and men transformed into spirits. Some stepped into Moscow’s role of imperialists and demanded that everyone submit to their domination. The terrorists screamed back, “To hell with you!” No one had any energy to be in the victim condition, which had been so present before.
Dreamtime took over as we were transported for that brief period into another dimension. For that morning, in that room of one hundred and fifty people, we became a community, crying about, looking at, and laughing about our world, witnessing our tendency to dominate, to suffer, and to rebel. Nothing was solved immediately, but something moved, as the way people thought about war changed. Something irrational removed our national boundaries and brought us together. For that time and place, the spirits were exorcised, so to speak; there were no longer imperialists, terrorists, or victims. (p. 218)
So Mindell was speaking in metaphors that are now clear. We do dream together – in our sporting events, dances, what we collectively watch and experience.
But it’s gotten so violent. Take the NFL and the number of concussions and early deaths, for one of many examples. It’s good to see people like Colin Kaepernick break our collective trance and remind us what we should be focusing on.
These are signs of very, very toxic dreams, but we get breakthroughs of possibilities for change.
If we come together as Mindell does in his conflict resolution conferences, even enemies can find common grounds and learn to dream of healing instead of nightmares.
And that ends this book. Very good read and I highly recommend it, even if the terminology is confusing. It rights itself in the end. The concepts are golden.
Wait, I looked up these books online and I think Wild Edge of Sorrow is the updated / revised version of Entering the Healing Ground, but please double-check me on this. When I looked at the books on Amazon, Entering the Healing Ground had a note stating “There is a newer edition of this item” and it linked to Wild Edge.
Hmmm. I have both books by Francis Weller. “The Wild Edge of Sorrow” (2015) looks like it might contain the material from “Entering the Healing Ground” (2011)
I’d also like to look at the term “Deathwalk” that Mindell uses.
Commonly, there is an experience known as “The Shamanic Death,” which you describe quite aptly, here:
When I lost my memory, I also lost personal history. As I continued on, all of my senses became hyper-aware. It was then I knew I had left the mind, dissolved from the ego, and gone into the soul.
There are many ancient practices to train in Shamanic Death, often by mimicking the rituals of Death. Fasting, meditating on the charnel house, meditating on the impermanence of the body, even burial or entombment in order to fully experience this transformation beyond brain, beyond mind, beyond ego, beyond body, beyond the little self, into identification with the Greater Self, That Which Is Greater Than Me.
Some of us have it happen spontaneously, through illness, trauma, accidents, drugs, even lightning strikes, and the formal ritual of initiation is offered through life events. Personally, I don’t know how many times I have “died” to myself, I only know that the process happens, and like layers of an onion – when I believe I have gone Beyond anything I have known before – there is always another layer of ego to release.
The Deathwalk can be the trauma, and it can be the release of that trauama. In walking with Death, you come to appreciate and embrace Life all the more fully!
There are many ancient practices to train in Shamanic Death, often by mimicking the rituals of Death. Fasting, meditating on the charnel house, meditating on the impermanence of the body, even burial or entombment in order to fully experience this transformation beyond brain, beyond mind, beyond ego, beyond body, beyond the little self, into identification with the Greater Self, That Which Is Greater Than Me.
Some of us have it happen spontaneously, through illness, trauma, accidents, drugs, even lightning strikes, and the formal ritual of initiation is offered through life events. Personally, I don’t know how many times I have “died” to myself, I only know that the process happens, and like layers of an onion – when I believe I have gone Beyond anything I have known before – there is always another layer of ego to release.
The Deathwalk can be the trauma, and it can be the release of that trauama. In walking with Death, you come to appreciate and embrace Life all the more fully!
This is oddly comforting, knowing a kind of framework to place that experience in – Shamanic Death.
I never thought of “training” in it, though. But if the Deathwalk is the trauma that led to going into this state, then perhaps training in Shamanic Death is a kind of “process work” for trauma? Still trying to unpack this book. There’s so much richness and depth. But the symbolism and terminology did trip me up.
The next book I’m reading (and will be writing about tonight) is Timothy Leary’s The Psychedelic Experience – A Manual Based on the Tibetan Book of the Dead. Thanks for the book recommendation, as I’m hoping this type of how-to manual may help with understanding the other books I’ve read and will read in the future.
Thanks for the replies along the way. Very helpful. 🙂
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