Does chemical dependency sidetrack shamans?

Image by epSos.de via Flickr

Frequently, I caution against interacting with mood and perception altering plants and chemicals to open oneself to shamanic experience, because I have seen this practice lead, all to often, to deeper disconnections and limitations instead of spiritual re-connecting and expanding. Because many safer ways of shifting consciousness can do the trick, I recommend and teach a variety of those instead.

In the West, intoxication was separated from the sacred long ago. Sacred and secular arts have been separated for centuries, too.

Yesterday someone asked me whether some of the most expressive and creative artists of our day and age who have lived hard but died young, from chemical dependency (or abuse) or related accidents or ailments could be sidetracked modern shamans.

The original shamans were performing artists acting out sacramental psycho-drama amid purposeful adrenaline rushes, embodying and joining inner dreaming and outer transformation (towards better), along with and on behalf of their communities.

Some or many of today's most famous (much lamented) alcohol and drug related casualties could be sidetracked contemporary shamans, drawn back towards ecstasy bestowing teacher-chemicals, yet misstepping and becoming lost in the illusive, illusory gap between the holy and the worldly or misunderstanding the lessons.

Or, maybe they aren't sidetracked — just journeying over weirder edges or newer horizons on our behalf.

Shamanizing is always intentional, as opposed to accidental or habitual. But this universe is full of levels of soul and psyche and dimensions of space and time where meaning and purpose might be hiding, disguised as unfortunate or tragic mistakes.

If someone is healed by the touching the art, I credit Spirit moving.

Earth watching in shamanic dreams

Image via Wikipedia

WOW. I'm still shaking.

Now that I have access to a shamanic dream station on the Moon, set up gradually this February, I launch many of spiritual journeys from it into the non-ordinary sides of our solar system, galaxy and local group.

I have ridden asteroid orbits and passing comets on quests for wisdom and understanding.

But last night I constructed a spirit-spaceship and orbited our planet, watching the earthquakes and tsunami waves, wondering "What next?" and seeking as many meanings as possible for the national and global catastrophes we are living and dying through today.

The daily news prompts me to pray and wonder often:

"How many uphill battles are happening all at once on our world, unleashing terror and trauma?"

Could our cetacean cousins, who endure so much human misbehavior, have been troubled by premonitions of tremendous geodynamic displacements? Is Chile shaking us into Earth Month early on purpose?

Many calamities we experience as unusual are within the normal ranges of conditions for earthy, incarnate life, of course. My vision cannot comprehend even a tiny fraction of the infinity x infinity of blessings being unleashed by all the tragedies playing out.

Still, even more blessings (off and beyond all scales) can be released by harmonious voluntary cooperation, the spirits remind me.

Based upon past stories and future visions, I know that any cross — the X marking the spot of any pain or death, from the greatest to the least — can release seemingly miraculous (yet perfectly natural) reality shifting energy for change towards the better, when (and as long as) someone notices and says so.

But there are even better ways to heal and transform. Even while Earth remains rife with hazard zones, shamanic shifters can begin opening soul-loopholes in the continuum of LIFE.

When critical masses of "shamanic shift centers" everywhere are dancing funner dreams of the best though mustard-seed sized (Planck-length or smaller?) openings, anywhere, stretched wider and wider, amazing gains will flow irresistibly from behind all everyday scenes, with fewer and fewer growing pains.

Image via Wikipedia

I decided to stand up.

Then I improvised an ad hoc costume and impromptu ceremony expressing Earth as the universal X, dancing the break-though resonance of FUN taking over the cosmos, relentlessly and re-creatively.

Through I have no knowledge of how many unknown neighborhood shamans are participating in this sacramental paradox, each in their own ways, unadvertised, I keep on imagining this circle of circles is growing and glowing, and will keep on, no matter what.

Believing is optional. Just be and live.

Transformational festival synergy

Image by Paul Stevenson via Flickr

When it's impossible to count how many miracles are happening, or measure how much power is being unleashed, as seeds burst, stars explode and galaxies collide (as matter and energy, and as soul and spirit), attempts are made to express or contain the fun and mystery as ordered numbers on conventional calendars.

A musing:

I was studying the old Athenian (Attic calendar) month of Gamelion that celebrated sacred marriage.

Gamelion would begin sometime during our (Gregorian calendar) December or January and last until sometime in January to mid-February, sometimes synchronicitously near our Valentine's Day (of unclear origin). The Lenaia festival honoring Dionysus began midway though the month of Gamelion.

Dionysus, birthed from the joining of Zeus and the Thebian princess Semele, is the Greek god of fertility, festivity, pleasure and art. Dionysus rescued his mother, storied to be the only mortal to give birth to a god (in those days). He restored her life, raised her from the underworld and found her a home on Mount Olympus.

For me, these energy patterns and cycles resonate and reverberate infinite possibilities, as a wild, wonder-full, harmoniously cacophonous, serendipitous synergy of unlimited potentials.

The sacred joining of two opposites during winter's darkest days, flows into the agreement of three (or more) gathered around a cooking flame, on the way to see one holy bride's early miracle-pregnancy. This long-awaited, shamanic dream of miracles being born into ordinary reality, sooner than later, is presented and celebrated in the temple of LIFE as Imbolc, and candlelight, and groundhog shadows, and much more.

Then feast days and traditions mix and fire up in the Dionysian, flesh-shriving, carnival Mardi Gras.

Outer masks express inner reality shifts during these tipsy-turvy spells of space-time. Extraordinary shamans' costumes trump same-old/same-old, status-quo customs.

But suddenly, new life goes into (who knows how many?) weeks of secret incubation before springing out again, all at once, all around.