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Today I am reading this:
Salon – the Dark Legacy of Carlos Castaneda
I saw an excellent quote in comments on another article I was reading – how – Castaneda capitalized on the psychedelic era, and that even Don Juan said that psychonauts were taking dangerous shortcuts. That the Power is real, and using plants is like using a crutch to substitute for discipline of mind, emotion, and spirit (the whole medicine wheel, in other words).
And yet the book seems to be largely about plants, plant processes, and dark sorcery with plants and animals.
The article claims that even Timothy Leary thought Castaneda was a fraud.
I just wanted to bring this viewpoint here. I’m re-reading the books because they are classic “shamanic literature,” not because I agree with the practices or have any intention of practicing them.
I hope, in my reviews here to bring the highlights of the books so that you don’t have to read them. The “best of Don Juan.”
The article goes on to elucidate that “Don Juan” was fictional – but as we are exploring in “Way of the Peaceful Warrior” (Shaman Explorations – Way of the Peaceful Warrior Teachers don’t always have to be manifest in physical reality to be real.
In my opinion, even if Don Juan is a complete figment of Carlos’ Castaneda’s imagination – it comes from a deeper self – and represents to me an Upper World figure who taught him something.
The article then reveals that upon Castaneda’s death, his “witches” (not a positive epithet in the Native American tradition) and adopted daughter/lover disappeared, perhaps committing a pact suicide. The daughter’s bones were found in the desert. This sounds like Dark Sorcery, indeed.
It speaks to me of Power Gone Wrong. That Castaneda used his fame to attract followers, and could not resist the Power. He failed in the face of The Third Enemy – Power, and put his own power above those of others, in the name of “teaching” and “helping.”
This teaching business is really quite dangerous. I’ve had people change their lives based on something I’ve taught them – and it’s humbling and frightening to see how powerful that can be.
I’m not certain, after reading this second article, that he defeated the Second Enemy, Clarity, either.
And I wonder about defeating these Enemies – once they are defeated, do they stay down? Or – like an addiction, can they crop up in new forms, so that the lesson is learned again, and more deeply?
Even other psychonauts rejected him. Timothy Leary refused to speak to him; Weston LeBarre (expert on Native American peyote ceremony) called his writings vulgar and false. Richard DeMille (son of film magnate Cecil B.) dedicated a large part of his life to debunking Castaneda’s fraud, calling it plagiarism. These were published in a monograph called “The Don Juan Papers.” Castaneda’s own wife, Margaret Runyan, said that the principles were taken from metaphysician Neville Goddard.
The newest critic is J.T. Fikes, author of “Carlos Castaneda: Academic Opportunism in the Psychedelic Sixties.” He claims that Castaneda may have had Native American contact, but that so many facts are wrong, that it could not have happened the way he said.
Naturally, the scholars would not be understanding of the information gained in shamanic states. It is possible that Castaneda took his own plant medicine, induced his own shamanic states, and wrote about his experiences as factual in consensual reality.
What remains is that he founded a cult-like group in the hills of California, took in several women as lovers and “witches,” who eventually published their own books. An institute was founded, “The ClearGreen Incorporate” which taught methods of movements called “Tensegrity.” These teachings are still being practiced and taught.
The tales from inside the cult speak of a maddened leader and his doting acolytes. He insisted on name changes, revocation of all former life. He insisted on name changes, revocation of all former life, total surrender and humiliation, sexual interactions, and seeing himself as an all powerful nagual (sorceror) with no respect for the lives of “ordinary people.”
TO BE CONTINUED….
Socrates places his hands on Dan’s head and Dan is filled with a surge of electricity: “There was a loud buzzing, then a sound like waves rushing up on the beach. I heard bells ringing, and my head felt as if it was going to burst. That’s when I saw the light, and my mind exploded with its brightness. Something in me was dying – I knew this for a certainty – and something else was being born! Then the light engulfed everything.”
As Socrates goes onto explain to Dan, “I manipulated your energies and opened a few new circuits.The fireworks were just your brain’s delight in the energy bath. The result is that you are relieved of your lifelong illusion of knowledge. From now on, ordinary knowledge is no longer going to satisfy you, I’m afraid.”
This is a classic shaktipat, or kundalini awakening.
Sometimes a kundalini awakening is spontaneous – maybe a person goes deeply into a spiritual practice, and their own body does it – maybe it is a stressor or life event. Shaktipat is when the Guru does it to you. Ready or not here you come!
It’s the beginning of the Spiritual Emergence, and Spiritual Emergency – which can often be diagnosed as psychosis, as it is a symbolic and emotional effort to reconcile a cognitive dissonance or integrate the higher resonance of the kundalini awakening.
We don’t have enough wise kundalini coaches to help people with this. The kundalini I was taught was gentle, careful. The kundalini I see at yoga studios now tries to pump it up, increase the flow, charge it higher. Maybe in our toxic society this effort is needed. I prefer not to force the flower to open.
But it is a vulnerable time – we should all have a Socrates to help with it! (and so few of us ever do!)
You can hear a talk from Millman, here:
Jig of Life
The Raven flies free – she/I/we embrace life again.
All that is familiar is a comfort – and yet it is new.
And the driving force within from the awakening – all the mysteries which were hidden before, are enlivened and appreciated in everyday life.
“Never never say goodbye to that part of your life!”
Integrate, accept – the depths are part of her/me/we. That driving force is the force to LIVE. The choice to live. After going through this, suicide has no power over you/her/us. You want life, you know why you are here, and you know what you want to do.
Your crises are not so important. You realise – “This moment in time, it doesn’t belong to you – it belongs To Me” (the Divine). When your awareness embraces the All, your little moment, your little dramas are grains of sand on a cosmic beach. Even the “one hand clapping” is enough to remind you of that All, associate with that All.
She/I/we fight our way to the surface. “C’mon let me live!”
You see the force of life – the magick of the flight of ravens becoming a wind of passion – flowing through all the cities and the countryside, connecting us all to that numinous experience – even the ones who are still asleep, are dancing the Jig of Life together. The beat of the jig – very much like a shaman’s drum.
At 3:00, the flowing life force finds a Witch, who, now freed from her restraints of the Social Mind and her Shadows – can choose what to do with the Moments. She can control time itself! (I’m still working on that one!)
The jig starts up again, and a man chants about dancing the life you’ve been given. He is joined by others, and the Witch realises she is not alone in her dance, she never has been, but now feels the intense connection she has with All Life, and the gift of this thing called Life.
Also an Interlude – a rest from the intensity of the last track.
Watching You Without Me:
I see this as a Middle world thing.
As far as she knows, she’s dead. Her body is there, but she is travelling the Middle World paths.
At 0:40, there are 2 ravens. For me, these mean Huginn and Munin, Thought and Memory, the Ravens which ride on Odin’s shoulders. Thought and Memory are like the hemispheres of our brain – rational ideas (thought) and intuition (memory). Both are required for intelligence. It’s just a flash, but it feels like synchronicity when I seem them.
It affirms that feeling that the filmmaker MrMarrs made this film for me. It’s not possible – he made it for himself – and yet (reading the comments, I’m not the only one), it is as though he has captured the feel and flavour of this journey. It must be a Common Human Experience, then. Synchronicity.
She looks around at her life, and it looks so comforting, even though she’s not there. She feels loved and missed. Her loved ones are worried, this time between times seems to drag on forever (“You watch the clock – the slow hand.”
“And I’m not here.”
She is a ghost in her own house. She can travel – but they can’t hear her, can’t see her.
At 2:19, the magick of the Middle World unfolds for her, creating her Totem, her Medicine, her Helper, the Raven. The raven has the moon in his left eye, and the sun in his right. Like Huginn and Muninn, he has integrated Thought and Memory.
At 2:49 The Raven takes flight, along with Kate Bush’s voice.
The stars obey commands, the whole world is infused with the amazing magick of life force. All life is touched with the same magick of the Raven.
At 3:39, the voice to “wake up! wake up!” calls out – but it’s fragmented. Is it enough to reach the (dead) sleeping girl?
He sends his Raven out.
Interlude: I have been exploring the transformation of Demon into Daimon.
Historically, the Daimon was a Helper Spirit, an Inspiration, a Muse.
But as Christianity took over the old ways, the Daimon became a threat to the authority of the Church, and the Daimon was relegated to being a mere Demon.
In our Inner life, we have our Demons, our fears, our conditioning from the Social/Tribal mind.
But in exploring these Demons, we can transform them into Power and Inspiration.
Daimon – a mediator between the Earthly and the Divine.
Carolyn Myss talks about our Feelings as Guides which point us to our Divine Selves, our better selves. By listening to our Feelings (before we judge them into “emotions”) – those initial instincts – that tensing of the gut – we guide ourselves to our purest state.
The Daimon is a connection to that Divine, the ultimate Helper.
So – an example of transforming a Demon to a Daimon. I don’t like going out among people, and I still feel sometimes like I am driving in a foreign country. All of these sleeping people hurtling around in two-ton metal machines can make me fearful. I’ve been in nearly 15 automobile accidents over the course of my life, and I know that disaster can strike at any time.
The Demon here is fear, anxiety.
But the Daimon is Diligence, attention. Because of the Demon Fear, I pay greater attention. I take responsibility for my two-ton machine in the midst of the others with sleeping drivers – people who are distracted by phones, children, drama, relationships as they hurtle around in traffic. I watch out for all of them. I cannot do it all – but this Demon of fear (think adrenaline, fight, flight, heightened awareness) gives me the Daimon of Diligence to make me safer.
It’s no guarantee – there are no guarantees in this life.
But the transformation means that the Demon will not eat me alive – instead, like a tame dog, it has been given a job to do. The Daimon becomes useful, helpful, even essential.
This is a key piece to surviving Extreme States. It doesn’t really belong here in Music – but – it is a part of understanding the Ninth Wave sequence, in my opinion.
To Waking the Witch, to bringing our Selves into our Full Power.
“Waking the Witch” WARNING: Creepy!
All the different voices saying “Wake up!”
Wake up wake up (and the Raven says, “You must wake up!”)
But the peace of death cannot last – you must wake up! And when you do – you will confront all of those fears, the darkness, the horror that is the wholeness of being human.
Most of all, you must confront what Karen Alexander, In “An Ancient Whisper” and “A Gift from Daniel”, calls “The Social Mind.” Carolyn Myss calls it the Tribal Mind – this is all of the conditioning which has been laid upon you from birth. It is a vital part of being a social animal – but it also overlays and scars your essential self.
All of that must be lifted in order to be born again, in order to identify with the Divine Self instead of the expectations of others, or even your individual self.
She hears chanting, and the Raven arrives in flight. “Look who’s here to see you!”
And the demon says to the dead girl: “YOU WON’T BURN. YOU WON’T BLEED. COME BACK TO ME GIRL.”
Note the “Wind and Water” theme – comes up in many of the key tracks of the sequence. I think this is personal to Kate Bush – how the wind, the water represent the fears of thought and emotion. It can be universal – but sometimes our fears are different.
She/I/we are confronted with the demon directly. “Red red roses, go down!”
We even see a woman go into a hole in the earth. This sequence has elements of Lower, Middle and Upper world. In Shamanic Death you must survive all three.
The demon says, “OY. THAT HURT!” I think she has decided she would rather be dead than do as the demon says.
So the demon takes it to the next level – horrible images of loved ones, suffering, entrapment, and the demon declares, “I QUESTION YOUR INNOCENCE,” and asks the chorus: “WHAT SAY YOU GOOD PEOPLE?” and the demon chorus declares, “GUILTY! GUILTY! GUILTY!”
It is this sequence which makes me certain that this is about Shamanic Death rather than Near Death Experience (NDE). In NDE, the judgement is released, and the person is taken to light and support and love. In Shamanic Death, you must defeat and integrate the Darkness – and this is definitely dark!
She/I/we must stand in the face of the accusations and pull out something whole – the Raven – the Soul – the Magick.
She cries out, “NOT GUILTY! Wake the Witch! Help this Blackbird!”
She chooses to LIVE. To embrace her whole self, her Magick, her Power.
And then hears the voice, “Get out of the Waves, get out of the Water!”
“Under Ice”
The Spiritual Emergency is immanent.
All of the imagery of the first song (and this was before I saw Mr. Mars) was gentle, watery – but now it’s frozen over.
“The River has frozen over – under ice” The texture of Kate Bush’s voice here is so soft, tenuous, velvety.
You know the feeling. It’s something so monstrous that you have encased your heart in ice, locked the demon under the river. And you – skating fast along the surface – knowing that there are depths there – but you skate over the surface.
The raven comes into play in the video. Raven represents deep magick, connection to ancestral magick (I spell with a “k” because it’s not a stage trick, it’s real transformation).
There something under the ice – it’s moving. A threatening feeling – I get chills just thinking about it, hearing it again. It’s trying to get out of the cold water! Something – someone – help them!
Oh no! It’s me…
It’s me! (I am the monster, I am the demon, I created this Thing and now I must face it.)
I am dead on the ice. The raven is dead with me. It has begun. (the Shamanic Death).
and – there it is – the little voice: “Wake up!”
There are a number of reasons this feels more like a Shamanic Death (or Dark Night of the Soul) than an actual Near Death Experience (NDE)
Starting with “And Dream of Sheep”
(remember to skip the first 1:30, I think the filmmaker put that in to avoid copyright infringement)
This speaks to me of the innocence of waking slumber, of sleepwalking through life – hiding the things which hurt, comforting the pain, and hoping for the oblivion of sleep, pain-free living. It is innocent, but it is not healthy, either.
At 2:25, there is a storm brewing, an indicator that things are not well under the surface – there is weather, and it threatens the peacefulness of “sheep” (an image for following blindly) with a potential spiritual emergency.
At 3:00, the adult woman who was sleeping has become a vulnerable, frightened child (who wants to be soothed by the radio, “talking about stupid things.”). She has regressed, and the emergency is immanent.
I love the line, “I can’t be left to my imagination.” It is in feeling, thinking, letting the mind wander that we confront our demons. But she does fall, deeply into the water, and drops into her own bed.
I love the image of falling underwater into bed, asleep.
The poppies – represent to me the desire to numb, to escape.
And the song ends with her going deeper, and deeper (as if into trance).
Kate Bush was very important for opening me to my understanding of Shamanic Death.
I’m going to try and share it here, using her music as illustration – but I am humbled in her work (and the work of the video artist MrMarrs), and hope to do it justice.
Language is not the best for describing inner states. Better with music, art, dance, expression. But I’ll try, here goes!
This is the playlist for the “Ninth Wave” Please skip the first 1:30, it’s some sort of intro which has nothing to do with this.
The story of the Ninth Wave is about a girl who skates on a frozen river, falls in and nearly dies. The Ninth Wave describes what she experiences in this Near Death State.
No bunnies is actually the hardest number of bunnies to visualise!
An excellent game to play at this time is: “I close my eyes and I see…”
Are you able to use this visualize when you are home, away from nature, and may need it? Does it work that way? Is it portable that way?
It doesn’t need to be nature, that’s why I gave you the examples of the brick wall, the hand coming up through sand. It’s whatever random images your mind throws at you.
You can even do meditations on “I close my eyes and see – ”
And observe your thoughts as images. You will find that, as you observe the images, your thoughts will still, just as if you were doing a mindfulness meditation or a breath meditation.
The advantage of doing it as a meditation, is it can move, like flowing down stream or running along a road or path (my two favourite visualisations for falling asleep), or a flowing scarf that dances around before your inner eyes.
The advantage of doing still images (as opposed to moving ones) is they are flashes, temporary, and you cannot get lost doing it.
That means that you open your eyes in between each image.
Close your eyes.
What do you see?
Open your eyes.Rinse and repeat!
Dog is first and foremost about loyalty. Dog will never leave you nor forsake you. Dog eagerly awaits your return. Dog will suffer from you and with you – and love you unconditionally. Dog is “dogged,” “like a dog with a bone,” and sticks to the task at hand. Dog has great focus and concentration, alertness and sensitivity.
Dog’s strongest sense is his nose. Dog can track across great distances, following his nose. Dog also uses his alertness to protect the tribe, the pack.
Dog is a pack animal, a social creature, and wants to be involved in everything the pack is doing. Dog does not like to be left alone or abandoned.
Dog is a guardian, a soldier/warrior, a hunter, and also the comfort of a loyal best friend.
In many cultures, Dog is the guardian of the gates of the afterlife (Anubis in Egypt, The “Dog Shogun” in Japan, and the Greek Cerebrus of Hades). Dogs have been companions of humans for at least 12,000 years, with ancient Mesopotamian art showing them collared and leashed in the service of humans.
In any regard, Dog reminds you of your own loyalties, too. Dog encourages you to put energy into your loyalties, and to drop those loyalties which are undeserving of your investment. Dog also reminds you of your service to others.
Remember the eagerness of your own dogs. How much they wanted to please you, to help you! Having a Dog Helper is similar – He wants to serve you, and leads by example. How can you best serve your pack?
After thinking about visualisation for a few days, I looked at how I use it in my day to day life.
When I enter a prayerful situation, I “throw up” or visualise a medicine wheel, to remind me of the balance and fullness of life.
Then there is a game we used to play while hiking and camping. When you hike during the day, you see beautiful streams, trees, mountains, birds, squirrels, and sometimes larger mammals. At night you have a little fire to cook your meal, and then you are left with the stars and conversation.
An excellent game to play at this time is: “I close my eyes and I see…”
I played it with myself this morning.
I closed my eyes and I saw a wall of tan brick.
I closed my eyes and I saw a hand bursting out through sand.
I closed my eyes and I saw a sparrow, doing a curving, swooping arc to my left.
You may find that the images come too fast for you to “catch” them.
The goal of this game is to s-l-o-w the images down enough so that you can catch them. It will help you to retain what you experience in Journeying.
This is a more playful way of flexing and developing your visualisation “muscles.”
Coda is having trouble posting – here is what she wrote:
Afterward
This is the final part of the book and Harner starts it off with a brilliant quote from Albert Schweitzer:
“The witch doctor succeeds for the same reason all the rest of us [doctors] succeed. Each patient carries his own doctor inside him. They come to us not knowing this truth. We are at our best when we give the doctor who resides within each patient a chance to go to to work.”
Harner then touches on the concept that in an altered state of consciousness, “The mind may be able to will the body’s immune system into action through the hypothalamus.”
I had to look up the hypothalamus in Wikipedia because I wasn’t sure what exactly it does. According to Wiki: “The hypothalamus is a portion of the brain that contains a number of small nuclei with a variety of functions. One of the most important functions of the hypothalamus is to link the nervous system to the endocrine system via the pituitary gland (hypophysis).”
There are a lot of problems in the modern world with nervous system dysregulation, so this is something that is desperately needed. Perhaps the altered state of consciousness is a deep meditation state that when practiced regularly, helps with insomnia, anxiety, and stress, and thereby really does heal the nervous system and other areas of the mind/body.
Harner goes onto explain the holistic fields of modern medicine that can bring this about: visualization, altered state of consciousness, aspects of psychoanalysis, hypnotherapy, meditation, positive attitude, stress-reduction, and mental and emotional expression of personal will for health and healing.
I liked the fact that hypnotherapy is listed because there’s a very wise doctor named Bessel van der Kolk who advocates its use for trauma:
Using Hypnosis In Trauma Treatment
This seems like a very good way of altering a patient’s consciousness in order to treat their distress and bring them to a place of healing.
Harner links today’s holistic treatments within the context of shamanism and hopes that more will come from this. In fact, he says there is no conflict between the two and in shamanic cultures, they encourage their people to use technological (i.e. western) treatment, adding in shamanic techniques such as visualization to accompany the western treatment.
Of course, as Harner notes, there still is a cultural and societal barrier if you decide to become a shaman. Harner writes, “You will not be burned at the stake, but you will not receive the Nobel Prize in medicine, either.”
Very true. In fact, in my experience here in the US, it’s very hard to find insurance to cover holistic medicine. But that’s not because holistic medicine is inferior. Far from it. It’s because of our capitalistic economic system where the pharmaceutical companies have vested interests in keeping us sick so we stay consumers.
Harner recommends the use of shamanic medicine as a supplement to western medicine, and that seems to be a good compromise.
And thus ends the book. A very good read and a book I would definitely recommend.
Okay – visualisation exercises.
Let’s start with a simple one – a breathing one.
You are familiar with 4-7-8 breathing.
To make your inner vision stronger, visualise the numbers as you count them.
You can visualise them in different colors – you can visualise the inhale numbers as expanding, and the exhale numbers as shrinking or contracting.
Or, if you want to dedicate a Practice to visualisation skills, set a time aside and practice “counting.” Visualizing 0-9. Put the 0 at the end. You can use any number of representations for the numbers – dice faces, roman numerals, numbers, or even a quantity of bunnies. One bunny. Two bunnies, etc. until you get to No bunnies.
This can be done – more advanced – with letters of the alphabet (or Runes, or Hebrew, Sanskrit, Arabic).
If, as you are visualising, you lose your place (it will happen), start over. If the chain is too long – go back to the last letter you remember.
Other things to do while visualising:
- Colours
– Start with primary colours – just the 3 of them, and black, and white. Expand your practice to include green, orange, purple. Expand your practice to include pastels – or neons. Expand your practice to include shades, like turquoise, jade, vermillion. As you see, the development of this skill is infinite.
- Shapes
– Start with polygons. Circle, Triangle, Square, Pentagon, Pentagram, Hexagon, Hexagram, Star of David, Septagon – etc.
- Colours and Shapes
– Blend your practice of visualising colours with shapes. I like to use the yantra forms here – as they tie chakras into the Medicine Wheel:
So – Red Square, Orange Crescent, Yellow Liberating Triangle, Green and Pink Hexagon.
- Medicine
– Practice honoring your Medicine animals, stones, plants by visualising them in great detail. Every hair on their head, every petal and stamen, the texture of the trunk, the inclusions in the stone. Colour, texture, form, emotional expression – how much can you tune yourself with this image of your Medicine Animal?
That’s enough for a few years of training! Start small and simple, and build.
I used the moments before sleep to work on my visualisation. It’s dark, your eyes are closed, you are comfortable – how many images can you get in before you go to sleep? Usually I get all the way through the Rune set.
These exercises also require concentration. Visualisation is an Air quality – but concentration is a fire quality. Focus of Will. This is a step beyond Mindfulness into Creation. You aren’t just observing, but you are actually creating the images, and choosing which images to create.
Recommended reading: “Creative Visualization” by Shakti Gawain.
Harner writes about dreams and the differences between “big dreams” and “ordinary dreams”. The big dreams can be reoccurring dreams or they can be so vivid, it’s like being awake. Perhaps he’s referring to lucid dreaming?
Big dreams are literal – if you dream of being in a car crash, it’s a warning from your guardian spirit that you will be in a car crash.
I’m a bit confused by the concept that a shaman can “enact the dream to prevent the reality of the crash on this plane of consciousness.”
Big Dreams are True dreams. Ordinary dreams are usually how we work out our stress. Ordinary dreams are like a download to long term memory, and a bit of processing of our problems. Ordinary dreams are incredibly useful if harnessed, and can be used to solve day-to-day problems. “If I move the stove over here, then the fridge opens the wrong way.” Inventors and artists have used ordinary dreams for millenia to gain insight into problem solving.
Then there are the Big Dreams. Big Dreams are dipping deeper into the Collective, and you receive a message that affects more than just yourself. It will tell you the role you might play in this event. It might foretell disaster.
But I am more Jungian than Harner. I believe that the car crash in a Big Dream – can be figurative. A car crash might mean that you feel your life is careening out of control and that there is danger if it continues.
That is where you, as a shaman, can enact the dream to prevent the disaster.
It requires some skill at interpreting the subconscious and unconscious and collective unconscious. These undercurrents are pre-verbal. They might speak in scent or image, symbol or archetype. Sometimes they even speak in puns. An outsider can be valuable in giving new insight to putting the images together.
Like the Pharoah who consulted Joseph about his dream of seven healthy cows eaten by seven sickly ones. Joseph had the wisdom to see that this was about famine – and that stockpiling and preparation would save the people from starvation. This wisdom followed the true dream, and prevented disaster.
There is a special practice called “Dream Yoga.” Castaneda writes of it, and I have some other books here about it. We can ride and steer our dreams, just as we can learn to ride and steer our journeys. It really is the same realms. You may even see clues in your dreams that you are “Middle World”, “Lower World”, or “Upper World.” This is called lucid dreaming.
The first step to lucid dreaming is a technique I have given you, called “This is my hand.”
When you can look at your hand, in a dream, in a journey – then it gives you steering control over the dream, the journey. That is why it is a good tool to use in your day-to-day. It might get you out of a nightmare someday!
In this chapter, Harner explores the healing power of a shaman, both in a hospital setting (only allowed in certain hospitals and only for Native Americans) and for distance healing. He cautions that the power needs to be transmitted from your power animal to the patient’s power animal, not directly to the person, as it could cause damage. And do not send your own energy, just the energy of your power animal. This prevents burnout.
This is wise advice. Some schools of shamanism teach the shaman to take the illness into themselves (like the darts, but there are other techniques), and in so doing, let the Earth and the Wisdom guide them to healing it in their own body.
This makes for a tough, disciplined shaman, but it is a dangerous practice.
Asking the power animal is wise – it is offering the Ordinary to the Non Ordinary, and letting the rivers beneath us merge and flow to solve the problem.
I would take it a step further: to ask your power animal to work with their guardians.
Because what I know about healing – someone can heal me again and again, and I’ll fall back into the same life patterns that made me sick to begin with. In order to really heal, I have to enact change within myself.
So if a healer asks my Guardians, they will prod, push, and guide me in the lessons I need to change and grow, and heal. And the healer’s Power Animal likely can speak more clearly to the Guardians than the healer could.
One of the things I frequently say about my practice is I do not “go in” to people and remove “icky stickies.” However, this healing practice, I could do. I could ask a Medicine or Power animal to speak to the Guardians of the person who needs help. Anyone can.
Brilliant, wise advice!
Question – are there videos or tutorials on how to do “visualizations”? This was written about in this chapter, but I’m interested in learning more, if possible.
Yes. I will come back to write more about this. I have written a few short exercises for improving visualisation. I will have to find them for you.
