Shamanic Shifting, Dreaming, Drumming & Foolish Wondering

Celebrating as many winter holidays and festivities as possible while dreaming deeply

2011-12-27T12:43:00.006-06:00

Again, I didn't blog on or about the December solstice or any specific Winter 2011-2012 holiday: Continuing a new practice, I shamanic journeyed on the solstice to a standstill in non-ordinary reality and waited at that crossroads for a spirit-power boost into new directions.

On every winter holiday I know of I have and will shamanic journey for power and knowledge, basking in the vibes of many traditions and appreciating diverse customary observances without copying.

These darkest, darkening, then lightening days have become for me a season set apart for deepest dreaming and intensest recharging, when I seek and receive longer-range guidance and "longer-haul" renewal.

In the original, non-traditional shamanic ways I practice, each journey provides revelation and activation -- prophesy as direct connecting with spirit in singular here-now ("hear now") moments (for me, then and there, as an individual, subject to and requiring ongoing shamanic shifting course correcting). Prophets (or spiritual leaders by any other capital-lettered titles) in most religions pronounce on behalf of community-, nation-, or world-wide organizations, communions, denominations or other large groups, but to avoid confusion and delusion Companions Circle teaches only incremental, shamanic shifting revelations and empowerments around specific prayer intentions by individuals and circles (when two or three or several more agree).

Many unfortunate, even devastating consequences arise from institutionalized revelation and from specific revelations by set-up or self-proclaimed religious authorities, whether the pronouncements predict the end of the world or give otherwise practical instructions about how to live. This article in Elle details one point of view from experience.

The misuse of human imagination -- the re-creative launchpad and landing zone for many shamanic adventurers -- also incarnates terrible mischief throughout this world. This Vanity Fair story tells the exploits of one gifted, talented mis-creative fellow (who now claims, according to CNN, he has learned his lessons and turned his life around).

Institutionalization and dishonesty and numerous other pitfalls every day halt intuitive ingenuity and sidetrack shamanic shifting. But crows on this winter's bare, snowy branches are watching over, and showing me in my dreams new escapes from such too-long-standing, destructive patterns.

Living 'neon signs' energized my wondering...

2011-12-21T13:14:00.000-06:00

Reading that humans devised and designed living 'neon signs' conglomerated from millions of programmed glowing bacteria activated my childlike wonder and shamanic wondering. Is the programming of one kind and scale of being by another somehow simply another natural feature of ordinary reality -- so no big deal?

Who or what programs humankind's reality -- and at how invisibly grand or subtle (or intrinsically tiny or macroscopic) a scale might it be happening?

Though it does not appear to be the case that our world is merely a bit of experimental culture growing in a giant giant's lab or even a giant giant's gigantic child's pond-water-drop viewed through a Brobdingnagian microscope (of any sort, toy to high-tech), I hear folks speculate often enough that we might be programmed.

Any mentions or examples I come upon of beings being programmed in physical, classical reality (the most obvious situations, those most likely to grab my attention) stir my childish wonder again, so I find myself asking, "How might this be happening in the universe as I know it?"

And of course there could be many improbable, un-provable and tricky ways programming could be happening to some and/or all of us. Most (if not all) the possibilities have been thought up already, then permutated, then extended to their absurdest extremes and otherwise discussed soberly or argued heatedly, formally and for entertainment purposes, ad hoc and ad nauseam.

The bacteria glowing in the researchers' sign might be doing fine, just living their spiral dances of universal FUN, no matter what. But the engineering project was undertaken for serious, practical purposes, such as developing low cost biosensors to detect pollutants wherever and whenever needed.

Image: Frostnova/Flickr.com

Secret rock garden in India inspires and encourages

2011-12-10T12:21:00.001-06:00

This here LA Times story about a hidden rock garden that "rocks" has inspired and encouraged my humble rock gardening efforts!

The picture shows only the barest beginning stages of one of the new rock gardens I started this autumn in Dane County, Wisconsin. This layout is next to a home, but others are secret.

Much more work and play with these projects will happen after the spring thaws. Until this territory freezes over I continue adding and shifting in gradual, unpredictable increments.

Someday I would like to shamanic-shift a vacant-lot-sized public rock garden I have envisioned in shamanic dreaming into ordinary reality.

Rock garden shifting and miscellaneous musing

2011-12-03T19:04:00.000-06:00

The picture shows a new rock garden's (soon-to-be) surroundings in early October.

My and the church's mailing address has not changed, though I have begun an "in residence" job near Madison -- installing a rock garden and assorted odd-jobs. I return to Milwaukee once a week or so, where I keep a severely downsized official residence.

Most of the branches here are barren now, in mid-November. Crows thrive on.

Miscellaneous musings:

1. I understand shamanic experience differs from psychosis -- but non-ordinary experience and psychosis might arise in some of the same brain cells and regions, and might overlap. A story like this one might be an example. But the archetypal shamanic-craziness overlap happens, plays out and materializes in many different ways everyday in ordinary and extraordinary brains, I have long supposed. Meaning, purpose and benefits (to self and others) make most of the difference, I am certain.

2. Shamanic experience is altogether different from scientific discovery, though imagination plays a role in both. When theoretical physicists discuss quantum weirdness; dark matter and dark energy; parallel universes, extra dimensions and the multiverse; vibrating strings, or superstrings (and membranes); singularities, black holes and more -- I comprehend all of these proposed marvels as matter-energy and space-time. All of that is still ordinary reality (baryonic and non-baryonic matter-energy realms that scientists can or could order or measure somehow).

But nowadays I read and hear more inelegant mix-ups of the ordinary (all of the aforementioned wonders of theoretical physics) and the non-ordinary (the routes shamans adventure), that seem to me to confound shamanic (or sacramental) dreaming, bridging and journeying, which I call mysterious, spiritual or imaginary acts of Faith, Hope and Love (the Graces).

3. Shamanic shifting begins and ends within without being of this world, and happens through mustard-seed-sized (un-measurable, more-than-infinitely TINY yet colossal) miracle-facilitating loopholes that will never be found through scientific investigations. Weirdly, I contend, believe or pretend: all worldly (individual or universal or multiversal) brains, bodies, bits and vibrations of ordinary reality (from the greatest to the least of every space-time/matter-energy kind, realm, season, direction and dimension) grace-fully contain wondrous arrays of these impossible yet dependable mustard-seed-wide doorways that are ever-ready for knocking and entering, that allow spirit-soul-imagination to reach on purpose into the non-ordinary and return with blessings.

I have yet to express what I mean by these musings, and this was only the latest rambling circumlocution, far from any final say-so.

Next adventures of the Blue Plastic Goat

2011-10-02T15:52:00.000-05:00

Weird: I dreamed fleetingly of the Blue Plastic Goat I blogged about weeks ago, waking up suddenly, visioning the tiny battered toy lying near a dumpster in the church's parking lot, just around the corner from the courtyard garden (the last known location).

Evidently, one of the new gardeners had indeed decided the goat was trash, or simply scooped broadly and unintentionally. Yet since then repeated garbage collections failed to capture the plain, incongruous figurine for land-fill.

Both horns have diminished to stubs, I noticed. It appears the goat didn't get very far after it attracted attention!

But that is only one discouraging thought -- possibilities stir my imagination.

I shall attempt repairs and listen for stories of the blue plastic goat's multi-dimensional inter-dumpster travels.

Shamanic flight: shifting out of sight

2011-09-19T12:09:00.000-05:00

Soon my "shamanic shift center" and the Tortoise Cat's territories will be traveling westward a ways: This move won't be as far west as the place that goes with this picture, of the first home I remember from my toddler-hood in Davis, California (where I pilgrimaged recently). I will be busing distance from Milwaukee -- still close enough to keep occasional, mobile office hours.

Companions Circle and Shamanic Shift Center will shift among the current official and known members' homes and rented spaces, while keeping its current mailing address. Anyone and everyone who wants to, or who is called to, can still join in, each their own ways, by declaring, being and doing "shamanic shift" in all of their unique heres and and nows.

But the location at the corner of N. Astor and E. Knapp Streets on Milwaukee's lower east side, held since November 1997, will be vacated by October 31. Amid this upheaval, Companions board is meeting periodically, as usual, to watch over the operation and continue to shift our mission re-creatively.

Lately, the mission-shift centers around this concept: A widespread shapeshifting circle, stretching though ordinary, cyber and non-ordinary realities that provides a dancing center for anyone adventuring shamanic ways without religion, tradition or belief-systems.

The board is discussing whether and how to officially record and certify members, ministers and local circles without stirring up institutionalization -- and discerning if official recognition, through electronic media or paper, is even possible for this sort of church that aims to be churchless, and operate though emerging new thought(s), spoken and sung word(s) and danced or jested deed(s). The Universal Life Church's model seems to have worked well over the years (but that church does not even specify any type of "ways" to live, and that may be why), so all I can report now is that this topic is still under prayerful study.

My shamanizing will henceforth (until the plan changes again,if it does) be unadvertised, ad hoc, impromptu and improvised -- mostly private, but not secret. I am un-affiliating myself from all shamanic and related organizations, foundations and groups, and unsubscribing from most lists, because my ways and understandings have diverged enough to be unrecognizable to most who call themselves "shamanic practitioners" or shamans or shamanic ministers these days, and this has proved more and more confusing to people who contact me with an interest in "shamanism," or anything related (mistakenly or correctly) to that problematic (but widely used and apparently unavoidable) term -- though I have nothing against what anyone is doing, teaching and learning.

The name ShamanicShift (or Shamanic-Shift) still expresses (to my satisfaction) my aspirations, methods and purposes, so I will keep going by it, so long as it does.

But I will not claim exclusive dibs, and dream and hope (daily) there are many shamanic shifts, shamanic shifters, and shamanic shift centers.

This blog (as well as FB and Twitter) will update as often as I find it is possible.

More regular blogging here and FB posting remain long-range goals. However, now I am focusing on writing that earns money -- and none of those mostly anonymous assignments have anything to do with shamans or their ways. Under my byline, for lesser, but still countable amounts, I write for Digital Journal (news about science, environment, health, technology and business -- occasionally other topics, even food) and Examiner.com (about Milwaukee airports and airlines).

(If you happen to want to become an Examiner, please join with my link, and give me a $Boost$, eventually, if/when you are accepted and begin publishing -- THANKS!)

The abrupt, mysterious departure of the Blue Plastic Goat

2011-08-13T08:46:00.004-05:00

The Blue Plastic Goat, a long-term resident of the corner nearest the faucet in the courtyard garden of Saint Paul's Episcopal Church at the end of our block, journeyed on suddenly and mysteriously yesterday -- or not so mysteriously, I began suspecting:

Two new gardeners came to water the place, and after they left I noticed the blue plastic goat had left the garden also.

Did those young ladies and this old blue plastic goat spontanteouly strike up a traveling camaraderie, then set off upon a challenging, new, adventurous itinerary? Or did they mistake the miniature symbolic figure, which I discovered while freelance gardening there a few seasons ago and purposely did not disturb, for a forbidden pagan spell cast over those sacred, Christian grounds?

Or did they simply mistake this outward, visible (though faded) sign -- of something amazingly wonderful, I had supposed -- for an incongruous bit of banal junk, to be tossed in the trash bag (for Universal Recycling)?

Maybe one of the gals collects animal figures, or artificial goats, or perhaps found the weirdly juxtaposed blue plastic goat a perfect incongruous finishing touch for a whimsical collage, or has a kid who would love playing with the spacetime-worn toy. Well, anyway, the blue plastic goat has journeyed on, somehow, some where.

Oh, farewell and godspeed, you wondrously marvelous old Blue Plastic Goat!

Feline Shamanic Experience - Trespassing 'Raccowlly Dog'

2011-07-28T13:11:00.002-05:00

Image via Wikipedia

My colleague the Tortoise Cat experienced an unlikely combination visit last night, both horrible, weird and natural, just as extraordinary as non-ordinary:

Like a synergy of Raccoon, Owl and Dog, I dreamed she explained.

It peed all over the back steps, much to her distress. Well, I can't smell anything now, but she still can.

Was it Totoro? No. OK, was it Tanuki or another type of Japanese Raccoon Dog (like the pic above)? No...NO...!

But there was someone there at the screen door, emitting a musky odor, we dreamed: both beaked and toothy; owl-headed and winged; a silent soarer arriving stealthily; then swooping, trilling, clawing, and scratching; while wagging a long doggy-tail vigorously.

I was awakened by bump in the night, but that was the Tortoise Cat knocking over a broom propped in the back entryway, as she fled from this mini-monster of a mystery-beast -- also fleeing, as I caught a mere shadow of an foggy glimpse.

Shamanic circle loose enough to shift infinitely

2011-07-10T21:55:00.000-05:00

More musings about this mission and its shifts that I decided to publish without editing:

I. We cannot even accurately call Companions Circle an un-church or a churchless church, because those terms are taken already to point to other missions, though there are resonances.

The concept of a "church of shamanic ways" that provides just enough structure to keep shifting out of and away from (an occasional circle, usually loosely held over cyberspace and/or within imaginations), and a body (a non-profit corporation, to be exact) that in some honest (though atypical) fashion meets the state's definition of church, was and is the intention here -- not linking to or initiating any lineage. In fact, such linkages and initiations are permitted, but not encouraged, in our circle.

II. Another motto came from my reconsideration of the etymology of the word church: "Circle, not cirice!"

That O.E. word cirice that became church came from the Greek for a ruler's house -- where the establishment, the enforcer of the status-quo lives. But the PIE base of church, and of the Greek word kyriake(oikia), is *keue-, or "to swell" and be powerful, the entry reads. So, besides usurped, dominating, enforced, worldly power, the oldest concept behind the word that evolved into church included "a center or circle of authentic, original power."

III. The self-declared members of this foolish church circle live their journeying adventures around the country nowadays, and two or three (or more) dwell in other countries.

This project was never (at all) about being and doing anything mystical, magical, pagan, new age, esoteric, occultist, spiritualist, traditionalist, reconstructionist, "complementary and alternative" -- or organic, natural, or indigenous. Any or all of these might be part of any given member's practices, according to free will and choice.

But joining mystery, spirit and reality anew every moment, without stopping to define the process, is ALL this folly that a few of us began on October 31, 1990 is about.

Companions Circle is what it is. And it definitely is, both incorporated and unincorporated versions (as one, the corporation being a subsidiary of the original), even while the circle shapeshifts infinitely. Probably this project would have been better left unorganized and unofficial.

IV. A shaman adventures through, shatters, re-heals, and goes beyond all known patterns. I call myself (merely) a shamanizer, when that is what I am doing on purpose in the moment, when I bother to use an s-word -- besides the all-purpose shamanicshift -- at all. But I do aim to leave all 20th-21st contemporary shamanisms, and all traditional shamanisms, and all related traditions and practices, from all histories and pre-histories, behind.

The techniques shamans use, and the discoveries they return to share before journeying again, usually, eventually become coded and canonized into beliefs and belief systems. The practitioners (whatever their titles) become priests, who may or may not continue to use shamanic methods, within the limits of their various traditions or religions.

V. This church-with-a-tiny-c is especially for lone, belief-lacking shamanizers.

Any two or three or more who circle around one or more intentions in agreement, within and as spirit, are this church. But the two or three may span dimensions, or even be the body, heart and mind of one journeyer.

VI. I continue to shamanicshift behind the scenes, for intentions brought to my attention, but I am doing my best to phase out scheduling appointments. The reasons: I cannot afford to; I am diverting to other projects that thrill me to ecstasy; and shamanic sessions stopped being fun for me at all, years ago.

VII. I shall be shifting this blog's purpose, too. Describing shamanic experiences was the emphasis when I began. But I am keeping more secrets about my shamanic ways these days -- because I have begun wondering if the non-ordinary life is best left unwritten.

Next, I might blog about ordinary reality science, technology and trailblazing endeavors in any field that are fulfilling shamanic dreams and themes, as is, without anyone's further interacting in non-ordinary realms.

Shamanic ends of the world

2011-06-18T11:53:00.002-05:00

Image by Shamanic Shift via Flickr

A rough draft I no longer intend to polish:

Considering recent news, I mused: An unusually fanatic fundamentalist, extra-prone to taking religious notions, concepts and doctrines only literally, concretely and personally, might still get caught up in compelling non-ordinary experiences, because most (if not all) humans have the ability, though few exercise it past childhood. But such a individual would then, most likely, be convinced that this wondrous (but dogma-tainted, personality-filtered) dream or vision applied to everyone and everywhere -- an enthused delusion, attractive to like minds who then eagerly join, until an unruly crowd forms.

However...

A shamanizer (who aims to stay sane) enters non-ordinary reality on purpose and seeks knowledge and power anew for each momentary intention.

So, speaking metaphorically, with many maybes attached...

Every Planck time unit, a Planck length unit of the world ends, a loophole opens, the world begins anew.

The building blocks / carrier waves of the universe are, each and all, ends and beginnings of this world.

Shamanic heresies, just in case

2011-05-22T13:06:00.003-05:00

I founded a church to be an open haven for spiritual experimentation -- a role original shamans reveled in, I maintain, among many (many!) diverse activities.

Most folks I meet take spiritual and religious concepts, notions and doctrines literally, concretely and personally, and believe (accepting without questioning; holding dear without reasoning; and other like processes).

But doing so defeats the purpose and power of myth -- with or without supernatural extras -- to shift self-conscious psyches beneficially (and, inevitably change the outer lives too, through short- and long-term natural courses of tiny to tremendous events).

Believers, as recent news stories have demonstrated (but this has been happening all-too-frequently for ages), seem to be open only to complete, sealed-up packaged-deal answers to longstanding unanswerable questions and boxed instructions for life's puzzles, challenges and mysteries. The goofier, spookier, and scarier the claims, the quicker these believers grab on and the tighter they hang on.

The consequences run from relatively harmless to unfortunately expensive to absolutely deadly.

Shamans do their bests to avoid believing -- except temporarily, intentionally, to accomplish a definite purpose (then move on). But the human personality might be genetically predisposed towards believing: Perhaps it's a no longer helpful side-effect of the previously survival-promoting checks and balances authorities -- and bowing to them -- mixed into human nature millions of year ago. (OK, after I thought this notion up, I read it had been theorized by experts already.)

I see widespread reacting against science as the enemy of spirituality as one of the most persistent patterns continuing to wreck havoc with education. Maybe this is because I meet few scientifically literate folks anymore.

Every day, I hear what I laughingly -- or not -- describe as: Scientific Literacy trying to talk to Religious Literalism. But always, rapidly, these weird, double-monologues degenerate into what I can only call: Confusion gibbering with Misconception.

I had thought an open "churchless church" of shamanic ways would help foster sacred play among flexible souls who prefer paradox, seek serendipity and take non-ordinary experiences lightly and darkly at once. But the venture is always on the verge of bogging down with serious believers, or being abandoned -- dismissed or condemned -- as a disrespectful (or worse) apostate project, rife with heresies.

The word heresy, traces back to the Greek verb "choose" -- and believers, who usually count themselves chosen by god or gods or spirits, don't like hanging out with folks who insist on staying free to choose.

Two mottos of Companions Circle are "Don't believe, be LIVE!" and "Question...Quest on!" Be freely choosy, too, I say.

For now the church ministry is at the bottom of my to-do list, except for my daily prayers and behind the scenes shamanizing that remain at the top, just because the practices, on behalf of myself and others (done in the spirit of sacred fun), still enhance my life.

There is, as I have remarked often, another sort of believer out there who confounds me: the apparent half-believer who still follows directions from religious leaders or jumps on a familiar religious bandwagon, despite skepticism, who performs religious rites, anyway, while uttering the bizarre phrase "just in case...." Or, are these words a NAME?

WOW...This Justin Case (What, another upstart JC?) must be a powerful deity or other kind of universal force -- indeed -- for I am stunned to hear these (sacred?) syllables spoken so often, during a wondrously wide-ranging assortment of religious activities!

Shamanic entertainment purposes

2011-05-18T13:47:00.001-05:00

When I consider my life as shamanic journey, it seems an odyssey of turning points, detours and lost ways.

Today I find myself often revisiting the days I emerged from a personal dreamtime re-creation crisis and began to study the contemporary shamanism(s) being advertised on flyers, imparted through workshops and linked to diverse complementary and alternative medicines and all manner of so-called new religious movements. The whole mixed bag was starting to trend back then, normalizing much of my childhood weirdnesses.

Because I suddenly found myself well, and what had kicked in and pulled me through bore a plausible resemblance to the "core" ways of shamans, I leaped in, fully enchanted.

But, for me, this has always been for fun, play and pretend.

On Halloween 1990, avoiding definitions, I and a few pals co-founded Companions Church Circle simply as a "church of shamanic ways" so any shamanizer (atheist, skeptic, agnostic or believer in whatever) could join this "churchless church" for meaningful, purposeful adventure and experimentation, on their own terms, under their own terminologies, with their own beliefs or lack thereof, beyond ordinary boundaries or barriers -- except that folks preferring to hold to traditions, systems, doctrines and laws would also be welcome as long as they agreed to foolishness and openness. But the temptation to take the church seriously still torments, as the unsteady stream of deadly serious inquiries trickling into my inbox or ringing up my phone.

I shamanize over all of it, however...

As far as I'm concerned, no matter what anyone asks me, I will hasten to insist this is for entertainment purposes, first and last.

Because, I say: Shows, stories, songs, dances and art heal, transform and even prophesy better than any of the deadly serious, or just plain deadly, full-on quackery now shamming and shaming shamanic teachers and disciples alike (however they are billing themselves) in this gullible day and age.

Being child-like can open heavens on earth, within and all around -- but such openings are momentary and tricky, often found along fine lines or through narrow gates, though orders upon orders of infinities of these spiraling loopholes await activation. Wonder and imagine one now -- a turn-key solution!

I express caution to anyone eager for challenging initiatory ordeals: At all costs, avoid, as hazardous to health and progressively sickening then fatal, any scheme involving being reduced to infantile dependency while following leading experts or authorities. Say NO, then enjoy what's already within you for free, or spend your money on funner games of life.

Rocky shamanic road: regions of crystal clarity and cracked cloudiness

2011-05-03T18:47:00.005-05:00

What is clear for me:

Spiritual, psychological and somatic healings and transformations happened for me through living some of the ways shamans merge ordinary and non-ordinary experiences. Irrationally, I sense and respond to an inner calling -- perhaps because of genetic predispositions in my nature -- to keep shamanizing, daily. I am happy to do so, because it brings me delight, wonder and awe (and occasional encouraging feedback).

Yet, my continuing lifelong studying and experimenting leads me further every day into an ecstatic, inconsistent agnosticism -- and a playful, persistent dis-belief in all interpretations centered around supernatural beings, places, powers or the like.

The extensive shamanic and related instructions I have partaken of taught me lots, often aside from those teachers' intentions. All too often, the classes and workshops also demonstrated how deeply the most successful presenters baffle themselves and their students, especially during intense large group awareness productions, thereby becoming famous spiritual leaders with faithful followers who hope to become famous leaders too, eventually, through ardent, adept imitating.

Shamanic ways can liberate the spiritual experiencing of reality -- or discovering meaning and purpose and "tying things together" -- from soul-stunting subjugation to external authorities, hierarchies and dogmas. But just the opposite seems to happen much more often.

So new ancient traditions and idiosyncratic, eclectic fundamentalisms keep springing up in the marketplace, for better and worse.

I have noticed over the years, combining shamanic methods with "new age" doctrines and "complementary and alternative medicines" (under CAM or other terms) can enhance or confound the practices. During many days I hear mostly confusion within this wild proliferation.

Leaving room for continuing questioning and questing, these days I opine shamanic methods combine imagination and expressive arts within light trance states practitioners enter on purpose while maintaining self-awareness, and work though (possibly permanent, potentially profound) psychosomatic shifts. But any self-shift changes the universe by at least a mustard-seed-amount, so this is mightily powerful anyhow (in my view).

My calling to shamanize involves me daily behind the scenes, as prayer over topics variously brought to my attention. I simply encounter and relate to those situations and events as I find and connect with them over again, within myself.

But I support myself through freelancing (writing and odd-jobbing). Beyond this, when I give up work hours and earned-funding to be available for consultations -- teaching what shamanic shifting works improvements in my life or facilitating (through some type of ministerial counseling) someone's finding meaning and purpose amid challenges or troubles -- I understand it is perfectly natural and OK to request money donations to cover overhead expenses.

It is also OK by me if prosperity-gospel or LOA (-type) shamans (mergers of the ordinary and non-ordinary, by whatever name) harvest a humongous profit from charging hefty fees, when free folks pay willingly, so long as their help to harm ratios are overwhelmingly favorable. But my calling does not cover such actions.

Besides, from experience, I know people can learn to shamanic shift their own lives effectively, relatively inexpensively.

What is cloudy, still:

I am content to allow the inspiration sparks and intuition flows underlying shamanic experiences and processes to remain mysterious, without supposing any extra or other source besides self, life and universe.

To this day, I wonder why I suppose I need to write a book, when I tend toward agreement with this blogger about famous spiritual teachers.

Really, I cloud over around too many questions to blog about here now.

Such as: Is it possible to balance beautifully along the straight, narrow line between prophetic, entertaining trickery and corrupt, scamming treachery in shamanic performing?

Embracing clouds and peering into cracks:

My favorite crystals show irregular, shadowy, fantastical landscapes, built of clouds and cracks that seem to connect weird, little clear spots and murky, vast expanses into artistically wrought mini-multiverses, miniature bigger pictures I can grasp for questioning whiles, as if they were wondrous, imaginary, dream-roads onwards.

My shamanic calling wasn't crystal-clear

2011-04-10T18:56:00.007-05:00

Personal notes:

Growing up, I mislabeled my shamanic experiences as mental and emotional sicknesses and sought medical assistance to get over the "crazyness" -- even while I learned more from spirit and spirits and practiced the ways in secret. The weird special effects were troubling, yet compelling.

Gifts or aberrations? Both, usually at once. Self-absorbed dis-functioning was the sickness, and the rest was direct experience of spirit and spirits, misunderstood more often than grokked.

Finally, during young adulthood, I began favoring the pathological interpretations of my experiences and this "made it so" -- the choice led me into grave illnesses and abuse (years of exhausting dis-ease and depressing disorder). After enough was enough, in a real way, I died -- physically, psychically and spiritually (though not permanently). I suffered a long, drawn-out near-death journey.

But then I began dreaming myself well for real, in and as spirit and spirits.

I would find myself dreaming transformational adventures, while I slept or slumped around in a daze. One day, I realized I was growing well, ever so gradually, so I kept going. Then I came to a juncture -- get well all the way or recycle, insisted spirit and spirits. (But either choice was absolutely, perfectly A-OK at this one, wondrous crystal-clear decision point; there was no shame or guilt at all in this encounter and challenge; it was simply, purely true-love).

When I chose wellness, it happened -- by leaps and bounds.

Those are my only real "shamanic credentials," though my shamanic practicing has been vetted by an official shamanic church (besides the one I co-founded).

Important: I do not suppose simply choosing decisively brings desired, desirable results. Instead, I suppose, changes involve countless overlapping, interconnecting flows, weaves and patterns, within many dimensions, at many levels, through many orders, and may take generations to appear. Generations of some beings go quickly while others take eons. Every choice changes the world significantly and every prayer is answered naturally, I am supposing -- but, first and last, with Mystery.

After I returned from the dead, so to speak, I noticed with astonishment that what I had run from, yet found myself entering into fully with growing understanding, was being called "the way of the shaman" -- just one stream of a popular spiritual revival. To get "up to speed" in ordinary reality with what had transformed me faster than light-speed in non-ordinary reality, I attended months of days of experiential study with various teachers of shamanic and many related ways, at great expense.

Before my flailing, failing fall into the deeps, during the better moments on my good days, I studied the mystics, mages and alchemists of the western Judeo-Christian tradition intently and intensely, occasionally under priestly guidance, more often alone. Before and after that period, I lived my individualistic gnostic heresies, oscillating wildly in and out of agnosticism.

In my tweens, I had studied psychoanalysis and hypnosis. But I missed my calling all along, life twist after roundabout turn, approaching what would fulfill, then always veering away by a few inches on the bookshelf to many miles in the world. In the long run, it all became learning, by hard ways up rough roads, though I had begun my earth-voyage in first class, with many blessings and privileges.

Now, what I live and teach bypasses most of the hardship and traces back to my earliest childhood shamanic experiences, not called any such thing by me in those days. Since then, all is influenced by every instruction I receive -- all sorts in many fields of life.

I claim no authorizing tradition or lineage -- only my life, lifelong studying and ongoing direct experiences of spirit and spirits, while by while, as shamanizing intentions arise. The way grows murky, off and on. But navigating the fog is fun now.

This is only one of the reasons I usually refer to myself as only a shamanizer, and that only when some shamanic activity is what I happen to be doing in the moment, stirred by spirit and spirits, which I choose NOT to define. Whether I call this life in and with spirit and spirits play and pretend, or imagination and art, or temporarily adopt other descriptions in attempts to explain, or acknowledge one Holy Spirit or Life Spirit moving, the methods work fine for me -- meaning life enhancement keeps happening, without proof of causes and effects.

Maybe I keep shamanizing though my skepticism because of genetic predispositions. Maybe I keep on because the practices delight me, while shifts for the better keep happening in my life.

Anyway, when I shamanize over a concern, for myself or for someone else, I work only within myself, to heal or transform my version and vision of whatever patterns are needing and calling for help, acting as if it will help, acting as if other folks' versions and visions of the challenges or troubles at hand (known and unknown to me, near or far from me) might change also, in resonance, according to free will and choice. Often enough to amaze, I receive encouraging feedback, stories of shifts happening. It's always a happy (yet disconcerting) surprise that makes me wonder and question all over again, then quest on.

Oops: In online directories I did begin listing my shamanic practice(s) some years ago under what seemed like the closest incorrect category (because shamanic ways defy categorizing). I have stopped doing this, but there are lots of listings out there haunting me, too many to go find and delete. No more listing or advertising for me.

Still, situations like this make me wonder sorrowfully, and contemplate withdrawing even further. Before any shamanizing, may I never forget to beg of spirit and spirits, "First and last, allow NO HARM to result from my foolishness!"

The (nowadays called) Law of Attraction is not the only cosmic law in effect in this multi-verse, and Trickster often gets a say-so in the grand mix-up of things!

Rocks fund raising -- fun and amazing!

2011-04-01T20:21:00.001-05:00

A couple weeks ago, many of the rocks and crystals here dreamed an ad into me, offering themselves for sale to raise money for this place and its mission, because they wanted to roll along anyway.

So I posted the ad on Craig's List. But I left it in the "materials" section, without any photos.

Then, no one called. No one called for over a week and I mused: I need to reclassify it and add pics! But I didn't.

No, I'll go back and delete it, I decided. But then, back on another task, I didn't do that either. This cycle repeated, five or so go rounds.

Then on Wednesday, a healer and jewelry crafter just starting out in business called! She brought a pal along this afternoon to "shop" and many minerals decided to roll westward a town or two for their next earth adventures.

I hope and dream this was another meeting among new "old friends" and we can journey together a while and a ways. Those mineral companions who moved will always be here, vividly enough, in non-ordinary ways, and the shift is renewing.

No matter what else, this encounter brought a few hours of delightful fun for me.

HourTyme fundraising for GreenTyme's circadian confusion shifting project

2011-03-15T17:56:00.000-05:00

Image via Wikipedia

Friendly news:

As standard time switched to daylight savings, GreenTyme's inventor Yale Landsberg emailed an alert about his organization's new fundraising campaign. As I blogged before, I like the Circa-Med clock and link to the project on the sidebar under Net Friends -- the only one, so far -- so Yale considers me a sponsor.

I began experimenting informally with the "meditation optimizer" version, shamanic journeying through it when prayer-requests relate to past or future experiences troubling the present. Weirdly, I seem to have been born immune to ill effects from circadian rhythm interruptions, so I can't recount any personal anecdotes about biological clock tweaking or harmonizing through watching (and listening to) this delightful, pretty, dynamic glyph.

For me, it is oddly cheer-inducing -- a frankly subjective assessment!

Certainly, more and more links between circadian rhythm disruption and many ailments now challenging growing numbers of folks are being discovered by scientists.

Yale's singing clock is not (yet) scientifically proven to reboot natural human biological clocks or synchronize our inborn circadian cycles with modern, artificial (but industrially useful and nowadays necessary) time-frames. The GreenTyme folks want to keep researching that hypothesis while donating 3-D versions of their unusual "suntyme-moontyme" (and now "hourtyme") clocks to hospitals and rehabilitation centers.

If you donate as little as $2 to this cause, you get a customized copy of the Circadian Meditation Mode version of theSunTyme&MoonTyme HourTyme clock. Here I am, spreading the word.

Shamanic carnival, mardi gras and ash wednesday within

2011-03-10T18:44:00.000-06:00

To experience this transitional season without ingrained religion, putting aside all authorities' permissions or forbiddings: I shamanic journeyed from the northeast corner of the sanctuary, lying among the rock circle, labyrinth-life-tree and all-mothers-all-children shrines into a dream that reached before and beyond all traditions I grew up with or studied since.

But I woke up tumbling within a carnival-mardi-gras kaleidoscope. I experienced a kaleido-scape that tumbled me from element through rainbow to archetype and back and around, until I fell into ashes!

I had taken a big bag of prayer-requests along for the ride.

I entered shamanic consciousness through swaying back and forth and humming, then spinning and singing in place to the background sounds of ocean waves and city noises -- until I found myself dropping to my knees then falling forward. After that I reclined and covered my eyes with the back of my hand for the journey.

The non-ordinary kaleido-vehicle spun me through Tues-night on an inexplicable itinerary. It paused again and again, each while within a new, unique destination wrought of a dazzling array of colors, numbers, letters, geometries, glyphs, terrains and more, each arising solely for transforming one of the prayer purposes in my pouch for the better and dissolving as we feasted then farewelled and traveled again, onward, in a spiraling, coiling, clattering flurry.

One for one and one for all and all to ashes at last, the voyage refreshed by Wednesday's dawn.

Shamanic time-flexing through a greener clock

2011-02-05T11:15:00.002-06:00

Image via WikipediaAs a non-scientific, experiential experiment:

I have been shamanic-journeying through the Circa-Med clock as a glyph-portal-vehicle whenever a prayer intention links to time, season or history.

One of the tool's inventors, my "new old" Net-friend Yale Landsberg, introduced it to me recently. GreenTyme's project is, so far, the only listing in the Net-friends section of the sidebar, because Bloggersmosaic is still in flux and I am still seeking more Web-pals with unusual, fascinating notions or programs (relevant to shamanism) to add.

[Being listed means I like whatever it is, though maybe for my own weird or otherwise individualist(ic) reasons that are, most likely, aside from the owners' purposes. So I'm not endorsing anything; the most the listing implies is "I'm finding these folks honorable so far, and what they are up to might be worth a look or a whirl."]

When I enter shamanic consciousness through gazing at this clock in (sped-up) meditation mode and imagine myself entering the non-ordinary realms by opening some feature of it down, up or outward (for upper, lower or middle worlds), I do, so far, seem to find it easier-than-usual to venture my spiritual way to the moment or while of the season or history I have set out to visit and prayer-shift for the better. Of course, every voyage into the unmeasurable multi-world of spirit is different, so my reporting is purely subjective.

Back in the ordinary world, scientists are studying biological clocks empirically and linking many ailments to body-time disruptions.

Probably, clocks are keys to health and improvement on every level of life. In art-play, another method of shamanizing, I notice clocks naturally correspond to compasses and mandalas.

My friend Yale hopes the GreenTyme team will prove (eventually, scientifically) the Circa-Med helps induce "chronic health" for modern-day folks trapped long hours in windowless rooms, who may be losing awareness of natural (green) time while living by practical, mechanical periods.

For me, so far, this pretty, singing clock is a fun toy I'm playing with and a new shamanic method I'm giving a spin.

Next I will explore whether this through-the-clock mode of shamanistic soul-travel might help me generate more beneficial synchronous happenings around my world.

More easy shamanic sessions

2011-01-21T14:32:00.000-06:00

What works best at Shamanic Shift Center these days:

In addition to simply being here, aware and relaxed amid the minerals, plants, symbols and critters (the Tortoise Cat and her pals) -- what I call the easiest intervention -- shamanic talk therapy works extraordinarily well.

This practice differs from psychotherapeutic talk therapies by emphasizing (overwhelmingly) the purposeful, re-creative retelling of traumatic or troubling life-stories (events, periods and situations in personal history) in the presence of spirit and spirits. In this method belief is optional -- pretending on purpose is powerful and effective.

Another shifting technique is enthusiastic talking up of three (or more) interrelated better potential possibilities to activate and live (from now on).

Transformational talking can be tricky. Acceptance flows into new healing and shifting stories, but denial distresses and depresses. Dwelling in the past just long enough to "grok it" (for want of a better term), but not a moment more (in any one session) is key.

Shamanic journeying and other ways of connecting with spirit and spirits through trance, art and ritual (steering clear of definitions and analysis) that help unfold this process are happening between sessions as often as during.

I notice more and more of my shamanizing for and around the many diverse intentions brought and sent here is happening before and after any phone or in-person consultations.

Also, I am experimenting, still:

I have been journeying and dreaming with the Circa-Med multi-clock I blogged about recently as a trance-enhancing vehicle-glyph. I have linked this tool up on the sidebar under Net Friends while this play and fun continues.

I will blog my first anecdotes about these experiences soon.

Other sidebar weirdness:

Bloggersmosaic is gone from that too-short list, temporarily I hope, because the website is down for a total re-design, the project's CEO @Amous informs me. We shall see what happens with it in three to five days.

The Net Friends section is there to highlight projects I and/or Shamanic Shift Center/Companions Circle participate in somehow.

Maybe the "list" will grow soon -- into a real list (of at least three items). I am seeking other interesting internet pals. A listing does NOT endorse -- just suggest, "OK, these seem like honest, honorable, fun folks, so have a look if anything sparks your curiosity!"

Reviewing William Bengston's "Energy Cure"

2011-01-10T12:11:00.000-06:00

By Jo Guldi/Joguldi on Flickr.com

I may go ahead and begin calling myself a skeptic, so spiritual enthusiasts among my readers can go ahead and unfollow me.

After weeks of considering The Energy Cure by William Bengston, Ph.D, I must report I find it engaging, but no more scientific in approach than any other book -- of the MANY -- I have read about "energy" or "vibrational" healing. And I disagree with the subtitle that states the book is "unraveling the mystery of hands-on healing" at last.

Disclosing that I was provided a (free) review-copy, I wish I could recommend it more highly!

Bengston, a sociology professor, does go into intricate detail describing his efforts to study energy healing scientifically. But, as he narrates, he indicates the protocols were not followed or the experiments were terminated prematurely or data were contaminated or lost. So his coverage is, as I understand it, just as anecdotal as complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) accounts usually are.

His set-ups may be useful as examples of how-to (or not-to), for others working along similar lines.

As I read I found myself wondering: Is Bengston embracing science, even as a maverick-loner, or, rather, cleverly claiming this stand as a raconteur's artful twist, to draw readers into some rather tall (and pretty entertaining) tales in later pages? Anyway, I did not find any formal experimental, or even much formal empirical, evidence that reveals measurable processes behind energy-healing successes in his account.

But because non-ordinary means "unmeasurable" by objective standards, and energy-healing is a CAM that happens in non-ordinary realms (the mysterious yet central source of the ordinary, according to those who live in faith and hope or as imagination and art), anecdotal evidence for it, considered the weakest kind for scientific purposes, is the proper kind to get, really, I opine. So, I enjoyed reading The Energy Cure as another teaching story about hands-on healing.

Also, I appreciated Bengston's how-to sections. Amazingly, he claims close to 100 percent success in practice, so why not give his methods a whirl?

Meeting a new old friend under the invisible sun

2010-12-21T14:20:00.002-06:00

I took a call while I was shopping for gifts for a family's celebration of these ongoing winter festivities. I do not usually answer my phone amid a hubbub, but now and then I am stirred by the spirits of the moment to click the green button.

So I met Yale, who was inquiring about my Wisdomology quote expansion on Sir Thomas Brown's words:

"Life is a pure flame, and we live by an invisible sun within us."

A search around "invisible sun" had juxtaposed my exposition and his GreenTyme Project for restoring chronic health by giving folks a way to show "natural time" to their inner children and brains more easily, more often.

These darker days, even the visible sun shows only the briefest, tiniest patch in the Tortoise Cat's play space near our back door.

Ironically, I am some sort of biological-clock mutant who is immune to circadian rhythm disruptions. I can always sleep for short or long periods when tired or sleepy, whenever and wherever, without suffering stresses. I have never experienced jet-lag or upsets from fluctuating work shifts.

Yet, as Yale described his clock that tracks the visible and invisible sun and moon, I began to visualize a delightful online meditation tool and was eager to see it.

Well here it is -- the Circa-Med Clock on the Net for you to see and play with yourself, in SunTyme mode! (Download versions include MoonTyme modes.)

I will be studying the material on the GreenTyme website more while I experiment with this fun, charming, cheer-inducing toy during shamanic experiences. While my tests cannot be scientific, I expect have stories to blog later, about whatever happens while I meditate with -- or through -- this alluring chrono-glyph.

Winter shamanic shifting in the dreaming stages

2010-12-16T13:22:00.000-06:00

Standing or hanging above the snowy winter garden, frozen dry stalks and branches transform into a vision of gold and silver trees!

Doors and windows to unknown possibilities show, but do not open yet.

This is the advent season: New lightenings, godsends and gifts will appear in this world in just days, with the sparks of the next adventuring season. Restfully aware, I shamanic shift in my dreams.

Plan changes are in the winds.

Shaman Antics Distract & Release Consciousness

2010-11-27T13:21:00.002-06:00

Shamans perform antics on multi-purpose, doing their bests to defy explanations!

Distractions entertain, awaken and loosen the grip of ailing prevailing patterns of matter, energy, space and time. Unexpected blossoms amid thorns show the next window in the wall.

We can allow ourselves to be drawn, for undefined whiles, into earthly yet heavenly mansions of many interconnecting multi-dimensional rooms, a vast, open-ended, non-ordinary territory of expanding realms of growing potentials and new possibilities. For me, this is best experienced, like a child would, as FUN and Mystery, though aspects of it can be studied and analyzed, by anyone who insists.

For everyone who joins in, amazing changes start happening from within, often seemingly instantly, but usually incrementally and gradually. Placebo effects, imagination, brainstorms, creativity, ingenuity, endorphins, immunodefences, chaos, serendipity and synchronicity (and, maybe, even some quantum weirdnesses along with classical atypicalities) rattle, drum, sing and dance wondrous shifts for the better into the world.

The shaman-antics can include any and many kinds of healing or consciousness-changing medicines, methods and techniques.

By the time (and in the places) successful shamanic actions have been concreted into dogmas and rituals and the original instigators have been institutionalized into prophets or priests, most followers are, again, searching for help or healing outside themselves, within authorities and their formulas, all ready, even eager, for new belief-systems to take hold. Eventually, the best (or most promising) of those organize into the next tradition or religion, alternative or mainstream (still shamanistic, perhaps, or not so much, depending on the complex action among many variables).

These days, the urge to explain, prove or debunk the ways of shamans through the scientific method seems irresistible to many folks. But, all too often, to me, this appears to turn into another childlike-fun spoiler.

I just began reading a review copy of William Bengston's "The Energy Cure, Unraveling the Mystery of Hands-On Healing" I OKed the publisher to send me, free of charge. Unraveling mystery is not a favorite activity of mine, but I expect the author presents some interesting, useful information I can blog about later.

Autumnal Alchemy

2010-11-14T19:15:00.000-06:00

Contemplating a sudden shower of autumn leaves, I wondered,

"What is the intention behind all these journeys?"

And heard:

A voice from the Burning Bush...

Autumn's dying, dead and voyaging leaves are vessels of life patterns and weaves spiraling into transformational middle-realm adventures. Those life stories were already uploaded into the branches and roots of their tree's lower and upper worlds, where dreaming recycles all experiences into next season's growth.

Then a voice from the Ginkgo agreed...

The colorful clutter of empty shells and decaying corpses that drift across life's paths so noticeably this darkening season are only the most minuscule, fractional sample of the myriad beings always tumbling into earthly, earthy niches, farther afield than they've ever flown or fallen, as all are finally accepted as primary matter for the most chaotic, radical and improbable shape-shifting alchemy possible.

Then I agreed...

Let the howling autumn gusts blow our dust to dust, because it is the weirdest puffs of this rejected stuff that sparkles into miracles, eventually!

Lame Halloween Tricks

2010-10-31T11:09:00.003-05:00

The Tortoise Cat and I became aware of pre-Halloween (Saturday night party) revelers running in back, hurrying away from the rock-garden last night...well, during the early morning of Halloween, really. But, all they did was steal my broken patio chair, so I did not open my back door to shout after them, and relaxed again, awaiting further developments!

I do my best to foster re-creative funning.

But...!?

Halloween tricking must be another dying art. Nothing further transpired.

I was disappointed while I walked about attempting to snap crow pictures this morning, NOT to spot that green wreck of a chair on a single-story section of this building's roof...or upon one of the construction cranes nearby...or at least upon a neighbor's porch...or car.

Just removing a cheap, old, worn, tied-together chair that one can hardly successfully sit in that was about to be recycled, doesn't cut it as Halloween mischief, folks. But, perhaps, I am being too harsh...?

I could suppose, giving a bit of the benefit of my doubt, the chair was used as a prop for another, more exciting trick on a more appealing target that was completed later, elsewhere. Still, essential to proper tricking is displaying the finished product -- to ALL the trickees involved -- within an unlikely, ingeniously absurd, public displacement or other artful, crafty installation that could only have been juxtapositioned thusly, on purpose, for trickstering fun.

Tricks, especially Halloween tricks, must be distinguishable from sloppy, drunken, after-bar-closing goofing off, or plain and simple stealing...or mean, selfish or hateful acts, like revenge or vandalism.

Tricks are crucial to practicing shamanic ways, so I take a professional interest how Halloween trick-or-treating is going. It is, for me, a diagnostic reading.

Uh oh...I am afraid, Trickster is less and less respected.

Lame trick-or-treating is only one sign that trickster energy-flows are being suppressed, repressed and blocked, an unsustainable situation of imbalance and dis-ease. More serious troubles and horrible disasters are likelier to befall those who can least weather intense or extreme life-changing and life-threatening challenges, if Trickster's chaos-channeling antics are not soon given more than only token (or, worse, incompetent or corrupted) expressions.

Shamanizers of all persuasions can help the world today by performing proper, Trickster-worthy antics!

Anyway, my crow photos turned out only slightly better than earlier examples -- nothing to caw about -- but I added them to the album on my Neighborhood Crow "Squidpaws" lens.

I hope you visit and take a look. My efforts to improve shall continue!

P.S. That old duct-taped, plastic-tied, faded pea-green patio chair was booby-trapped...with BLESSINGS (as is everything I leave out)!

My new Halloween lenses are shamanic

2010-10-21T10:49:00.001-05:00

Shamanizing on Squidoo: I built five "SquidBOO" Halloween lenses about cats, costuming and celebrating ancestors.

My take on Halloween is individualistically shamanic. Recently someone asked me if he could characterize my approach as a blend of Anglican Christian, Celtic Shamanism and "universalist" Voodoo that veers away from all of them. But there is far more to it (the Jewish, Hawaiian and scientific influences, to name only a few of many) and I prefer not to define what I do.

My style and practice shifts as I let myself be tugged and shoved by the spirit (and spirits) of the present.

But, for me, All Hallows Eve has long been a favorite holy night that opens up a wondrous few days of shifting into dark-days (deeper-dreaming, wilder-storying) mode, a mini-season when processes honoring and healing past energy patterns and flows seem to begin spontaneously and naturally. Now, I am amid an extra-long spiritual journey to consult with both soul and genetic ancestors, and I am recording that adventure on my Halloween Story lens. The Hallowe'en lens is about putting hallowing back in the holiday.

All of my (now more than 100) lenses could use polishing, of course, but I published those two unfinished on purpose, to keep adding onto throughout this transitional, shifting Autumn season. Links to the other three related lenses, two about costuming and one about cats, show up on those, too.

So please visit and interact!

You do not need a Squidoo account to comment on my lenses. But if you do want to sign up, please give Shamanic Shift Center a boost by using my referral link.

Photo: By ImageAfter.com

Easiest shamanic session ever

2010-10-06T13:03:00.000-05:00

Image by Shamanic Shift via Flickr

The east room at Shamanic Shift Center is a rock, crystal and plant shrine of shrines and spirit-matter portal: When you simply sit or recline there as a shamanic session, shifts happen!

We can do any type of spiritual healing here, amid the many rocks, crystals, plants and symbols that represent spirit and spirits from all realms of reality. But now, I hereby make certain I have published this favorite, fall-back "secret method" that seems too easy to be true.

Daily, I renew the intention of shamanic shifting for the better, and towards the best (for all), that consecrates space-time. The room is always activated or set in stand-by mode.

Shamans are expected to act-out desired reality-shifts and I do this in my ways, as I am nudged and pushed by spirit. Often, I costume-up, burn incense and perform these antics secretly in the place, during my daily cycle of prayer-meditation, my version of a daily office.

Then, the room becomes the show--a material, tangible, energetic sign of inner consciousness and outer world shifting happening.

Because this phenomenon is spirit-powered, it is always 100 percent efficacious. As with all sacraments, noticeable manifestations may be subtle or obvious, gradual or instantaneous. There is always some of both/and, I understand, occurring at many levels at once.

What I mean by neighborhood shamanism

2010-09-21T12:25:00.002-05:00

Image via Wikipedia

When I practice what I call my neighborhood shamanism, I do not mean I am known in my neighborhood as a community shaman. Community shamanism is one of the bigger inspirations behind what I do, however.

A neighborhood shaman practices universal shamanic ways, focuses helping spiritual and physical attention and energy upon the neighborhoods of her life and shamanizes mostly behind the scenes. This type may eventually write a book, but will not become well known though touring and presenting workshops to large circles.

A distinguishing feature of my neighborhood-focused interpretation is the daily practice of finding principal teachings and indispensable helpers though new, now-stretching interacting within ordinary places and commonplace situations around my worldly bailiwick. My next mentor is any being I encounter as situations and events happen.

But I look, listen, watch and sniff for particular, personalized lessons from everyday urban wildlife neighbors, the animals, plants and rocks around my block. I do my best to include human wild-life on the faculty of this neighborhood-shaman school.

Lightning strikes, cloudbursts and wind gusts tell me stories. But, more often, I come under the tutelage of quieter advisors, such as rolling street stones, persevering garden weeds and stinging, biting bugs.

I have been busy on Squidoo lately!

I just opened the Urban Wildlife lens on Squidoo to celebrate these local, natural counselors from scientific angles. It is a cousin to the Nature Spirits lens that shows shamanic views.

Going forward, I have lots of lens expanding to do. Squidoo has served as my filing system for over two years years. Now, I am "lensing" more intently, gradually compiling a relevant lens-library there.

Also, I have shifted to teaching mostly on the Internet: Though this blog, my shamanic lenses and ShamanicShift's Facebook page.

In my view, the interconnecting cyber-realms are full of Net-neighborhoods.

Shamanic Meditation Article

2010-09-02T21:23:00.002-05:00

Image by Shamanic Shift via Flickr

I wrote these thoughts for another website that has fallen off the Web. I am re-purposing the notes here.

There are many powerful ways of shamanic meditation! Many people who find eastern self-regulatory styles of meditation (where one focuses attention on the background of reality or on a single object, thought, or action) to be difficult, or next to impossible, often take readily to shamanizing, which can be considered to be an active way of meditating, though it is much more than that.

Shamans shift consciousness to shift reality and then they act out the changes they desire.Shamans enter aware, ecstatic trances called shamanic states of consciousness on purpose in order to shamanize. They quest for visions of beneficial changes alone in a wilderness sanctuary or in their rooms in the city or in group-consciousness shifting performances during community circle ceremonies.

The trances of shamanic meditation are easily and naturally induced through continuous (often monotonous) pulsing or droning sounds such as rattling, drumming, piping, chanting, or singing. Dancing and posture changes are other ways.

Many shamans use all of the above, and there are many more.

Some shamans use entheogenic (so named as "divine-experience generating") plant or chemical substances, or "teacher" plants and chemicals, to enter much deeper and longer trances. This kind of psychedelic shamanism receives a lot of attention these days but, really, it is one of the more unusual ways of shamanic meditation.

There are many ways to shamanize that do not involve the use of hallucinogenic plants or chemicals, that are safe and effective for almost everyone. I will list and describe some favorites.

Experiencing wilderness is natural way to shamanize. Urban shamans connect to life spirit in and as Nature by keeping company with trees, rocks, birds, and other city wild life for healing and transforming purposes.

Opening a shamanic circle: Shamans create a circle around themselves and situations in need of transformation. They use mental and physical symbols and act out through many expressive arts in individualistic rituals, that are also performances, to open the circle and connect with spirit or spirits.

The power symbols and objects used in opening and keeping a shamanic circle can be imaginary or material, tiny or huge. Usually it is a mix of both. The sacred circle might be painted on the shaman's drum or costume or spread out upon a cloth or blanket which then becomes a portable altar.

Non-ordinary non-journeys: Some shamans meditate into shamanic states of consciousness and non-ordinary reality through drumming or chanting or any of the other ways mentioned above that shamans use to shift themselves, or even sleep. They are then visited right where they are by spirit and spirits given gifts of knowledge and healing for the situation at hand, without any sense of soul-traveling through other realms.

Shamanic dreaming is another way of shamanic meditation. There are many methods and techniques of shamanizing through dreams. Lucid dreaming is only one method. Simply offering dreaming and sleeping to spirit for healing and transforming purposes before lying down for a night's rest works well for me, whether or not I remember any specifics.

Always, the overall goal of shamanizing is to bring helping knowledge and healing power from spirit and/or spirits, as the shaman understands these concepts, back to one's everyday life and family, community, and the situations that are calling out for healing or other change for the better. Shamans do not seek to transcend ordinary reality permanently, in contrast with the goal - or at least a major goal - of most religions and spiritual traditions.

It is not necessary to believe that life spirit and the spirits of life are supernatural in any way or divine at all in order to shamanize. Shamanic shifting may be most effective when practitioners let shamanism happen aside from theology and dogma and just call it by what they find themselves doing in the process, in the moment - dreaming, imagining, storytelling, expressive and creative arts, performing, or a dynamic synergy of several or all of the above.

Shamanic meditation involves body as much as psyche and soul - all levels of living and being are interconnected and one in the ways of shamans. Everyone is material, psychic, and spiritual at once and none of these is valued over the others.

Shamanic meditation begins and ends here and now on earth. Also, even though shamanic meditation can be fun and exciting, it is never undertaken for entertainment purposes only, or as a substitute for ordinary reality, in contrast to the more popular "astral travel" and recreational drug use.

There is always a purpose for shamaniziing, related to self, community, and world healing. I constructed my Shamanic Meditation lens on Squidoo to go with this article.

Crackpot shamans (poem)

2010-08-09T18:28:00.001-05:00

Image by Shamanic Shift via Flickr

Crackpot shamans...
Shamanize with cracked pots:
Shamanic shifting extra changes through broken spiral shells...

Trickstering up the heat under simmering alchemical vessels,
shattering them into hatching new life early,
as uncountable, unintended consequences,

Acting-out crackpot dreams and schemes within a mess of carefully collected builder-rejected stone fragments...!

Crackpot shamans costume themselves in leftover pot-shards
and fling leftover pot-scrapings around,
starting unaccountable universal bread-dough starters...!

Crackpot shamans empower catastrophic, re-creative shaman-antic ecstasies
with risky whiffs of fermenting fumes leftover at the bottom
of the cosmic, broken-open wine barrel...!

The original shamans had to open up new circles

2010-07-26T15:37:00.007-05:00

Image via Wikipedia

...The Wise One assured me in a shamanic dream, a little while before Crow cawed me back into everyday life in ordinary reality.

I was dreaming I was kept outside an educational circle of scientists, artists and philosophers who were discussing the meaning of the words spirituality, humanist, atheist and agnostic. Occasionally the discussing heated into arguing, but most of this impressive convocation stayed amiable and I felt drawn to the edges where several outsiders, other travelers on the nearby road I was journeying, had paused to listen in.

My dream-scape had opened onto a windblown, grassy, wild-flowery field, and I found myself wandering among gigantic concentric circles of standing stones, on a plain surrounded by hillier terrain, with an Oak grove in the near distance and a woods of many kinds of trees much further away. The circle of esteemed experts beckoned enticingly.

But when I attempted to join in and play along, my suggestions were dismissed with impatient eye-rolls by most of the scientists, because they had already concluded that I practice superstitions, deal with paranormal beings or aim to promote pseudoscience.

But I am an ecstatic, paradox-embracing hylozoist, for whom the supernatural would be superfluous.

Many of the philosophers condescended to reply to my suggestions kindly "Thanks anyway, but of course you don't understand these matters are not nearly so simple!" Most of the artists were in favor granting me an audience, until I showed how inexpertly I drew likenesses, how weirdly I composed pictures and how amateurishly I performed songs and dances.

"But I know a thing or two about this and that, I really do!" I complained to the Wise One guiding me. "And why are science, art and philosophy professionals venturing so far afield to pick out these topics?" I asked.

"You'll do well to get used to being left out," this teacher advised me, "and these far fields have long fascinated visiting experts from all other fields of human experience, for many mysterious reasons."

The other travelers were turning away from me, too, striding back to the road, some calling "Come on now, it's about time to head home!"

The teaching continued: "The original shamans invented art, science and philosophy, but they had to open new circles to do it, over on the outskirts of popular gathering places, at the oddest hours, and then afterwards many of them had to hideout in the wilderness for extended whiles or suddenly hightail it away, trailblazing the next twists of the road onwards."

"Of course, the best shamans have usually been crackpots too..." my mentor called after me as this dream was dispersing.

Updated, next day, in response to inquiries: The signal was breaking up then, during the shamanic dream-journey crow cawing call-back, so I don't know if I heard the crackpot remark correctly or completely, or what it's supposed to mean. Soon, I will shamanic journey back to ask.

Shamanic questions and answers introduction

2010-07-18T11:29:00.005-05:00

Image via Wikipedia

When asked to describe my shamanism, I reply with statements like these, usually:

As a neighborhood shaman (with a small-s, which means shamanizer, to me, not a title) I seek shamanic teachings and experiences as close to home as possible, instead of (but not as opposed to) traveling to exotic locations.

Because I experience the beings, places, and situations in my neighborhood interconnecting and reaching out into the spiraling, coiling, flowing and weaving of all-there-is, and because I adapt and innovate, as guided by spirit and spirits, from an expanding universal set of shamanic ways, I am a universal shaman too.

Shamanic ways connect inward, non-ordinary potential, possibilities and power with outward, everyday here and now challenges.

I live, practice and teach shamanic innovations for shifting life towards the better (and best) in Milwaukee, Wisconsin and over the Net, so urban-shaman and cyber-shaman might fit, also. Besides an array of historic and new landmarks, museums and gardens offering inexhaustible (if often exhausting) self-educational opportunities, Milwaukee's east side and downtown, closest-by Shamanic Shift Center, teem with subtle, secret and some glaring shamanic teachers (for those with eyes focused and ears tuned to them).

I have been answering emailed questions about contemporary shamanic ways on Squidoo lenses, and shall continue. My destination lenses, without teaching shamanism, honor venues I call "sacred places" where I have experienced direct connecting to spirit and spirits.

This post promotes my lenses because I intend to keep teaching by publishing questions and answers though that platform, as well as this weblog, gradually grouping and linking lenses and blog posts together into a growing, non-linear ebook of my interpretation of contemporary shamanism and related topics.

A near-future post will list questions and link to answers, and be updated as an index. Gradually and steadily, this project will become better organized, more inter-linked and usefully comprehensive.

Lens earnings, like Amazon commissions and ad-revenue here, go to Companions Circle Church, Inc. directly, Shamanic Shift Center's parent corporation.

Sacrifice is necessary in shamanic work

2010-07-03T15:54:00.000-05:00

Image by Shamanic Shift via Flickr

I receive mixed feedback for continuing to do shamanic work on a donation basis. Some express admiration, but just as many voice concerns.

I have concerns, too.

Offering services (and teaching) for a donation means there is no set fee list or scale, though I posted a few suggested amounts on the internet by request, or because of listing requirements. Requesting a donation does not make the sessions free.

While spiritual processes cannot be quantified, the space, time, matter and energy costs necessary to keep this practice available are totaled up regularly and presented to me by the universe, with due dates.

So far, overall, I am still paying to shamanize.

More than one visitor has gushed, "I'm so glad you don't charge anything, because now I can afford _____, _____, and _____!" These people also undervalued and underutilized the potentials and possibilities of their sessions, it turned out.

Before money was invented, no one would consider asking a shaman for assistance without giving generous donations "in kind" (in life sustaining stuff), at a sacrificial level.

Sacrifice is a prerequisite for successful shamanic shifting of self and reality towards the better.

It seems to me, some confusion and consternation around asking and accepting "payment for shamanic work" involves mix-ups about the nature of sacrifice and the meaning of the word.

Incorrectly, sacrifice has been linked to altruism or has come mean something like: being forced to give up something good now to get something worse in return (or nothing), or to get something nebulously or dubiously better, possibly after a long (even lifelong) delay, such as feel-good or "get into heaven with less hassle" points.

But sacrifice, or "making sacred" on purpose, is really: consciously and willingly giving up something significant now to receive something of greater value as soon as possible, as part of a meaningful, deliberate and focused working process. In many ceremonial spaces flowers symbolize the power released through sacrifice because they grow and give up their beautiful, blooming lives to generate new seeds.

Without sacrifice, there can be helpful technique-usage, but not sacrament, or the transformation of power from outer and ordinary into inward and non-ordinary (magnified infinitely) life shifting.

In this society, money has been the preferred exchange medium and "sacrifice stuff" for hundreds of years.

Money is required for non-profit (just as much as for profit-earning) businesses to pay for overhead and improvements. Money is on my short list of the most meaningful forms of energy-exchange.

Working on a donation basis, even though this shamanic practice requires money to continue, is another spiritual exercise for me, my current method (subject to change) of keeping spirit and spirits in the spiral-dancing loop, guiding transactions, so work and payment can flex naturally as different people, situations and circumstances show up.

Review: "Dance of Stones" by Kenn Day

2010-06-26T16:20:00.000-05:00

Kenn Day sent me a copy of "Dance of Stones: A Shamanic Road Trip" to review recently, even though the book was published in 2008. I am very happy we connected on Facebook around this engaging, effective introduction to modern shamanic practices.

In narrative chapters Kenn describes traveling through Europe, exploring new connections—with Soli, a woman he met at a magick workshop they both found disappointing, and with the spirits of the places and situations they adventure into as their roadtrip winds along.

Instead of following ordinary reality maps, they head towards the next, nearest intersection of synchronicity and serendipity.

Of course their inner journeys are progressing and intertwining along the way. Kenn shows Soli shamanic practices that bring her, suddenly, to the termination of her job and, eventually, to the beginning of a really fulfilling, even more successful career. Soli's journey leads Kenn to a new stone circle vision and a future shamanic mission.

In Deepening chapters amid the thickening plot, Kenn offers his interpretation of contemporary western shamanism (that incorporates eastern spirituality teachings and practices, also).

Kenn's writing is clear and he presents ideas simply yet entertainingly. His shamanic terminology and procedures differ from mine, as I expected they would.

Often, I urge readers of shamanic books to do the exercises presented, as instructed or as they are guided by spirit(s), and experience for themselves what matches up and what differs. With shamanic experience, surface disagreements usually open up to deeper agreements.

"Dance of Stones" was, for me, a teaching by example of "how to write a shamanic book" - as the suspenseful, sacramental story of an adventurous, multi-level journey along outer and inner edges.

Reading this story has also helped me (continue to) rethink and reorganize how I teach shamanic ways.

The Amazon link to the book includes Companions Circles affiliate code. Next, I will add most of this review to the many already posted on the book's Amazon page.

Shamanic shift as a name, verb, method and more

2010-06-15T18:13:00.000-05:00

Image by Shamanic Shift via Flickr

ShamanicShift is...

Shamanic-Shift is a favorite, fun "god is a verb" name for my life shamanic journey, but it can be anyone's.

Shamanic Shift Center's purpose and mission is encouraging and inspiring (independent, interconnecting, overlapping individuals and circles of circles of...more) shamanic-shift centers anywhere and everywhere in ordinary reality. Participation is by thought or dream, word or song and deed or dance, wherever you are.

ShamanicShift's Facebook page is another place I post notes about shamanic shifting as a shamanizing method, or open-ended set of shamanic techniques. My shamanic lenses on Squidoo are presenting my interpretation of neighborhood and universal shamanism, topic by topic. Whether or not I finish my shamanic book in paper or electronic form, I will keep sharing on the Web, one on one and in small circles.

A while ago I let go of several extra .com, .net, and .info (and more) domain names I had claimed out of a blend of enthusiasm and fear.

Personally, I don't have extra money to develop and deal in internet real estate. And trying to own the name, aside from being and living it would turn me astray from Shamanic Shift Center's and my purposes.

Detours always work out in the long run, of course, after twists and tumbles along the hard way. Now, I get solicitation emails frequently, warning me that someone else will take or wreck the ShamanicShift/Shamanic-Shift name and brand if I fail to secure a related domain name.

For the record: The Shamanic-Shift.org domain is the only second level domain I am keeping, as a fall-back web home, except for CompanionsCircle.org and shamanic jester-fool Shamantic! The Wise's old (no longer updated) domain that I learned html (and some css and php) on back in 2004, where I still host images and videos, as needed.

So, to other nearby or distant Shamanic-Shifts/ShamanicShifts, I (along with my colleague the Tortoise Cat) say, "Please keep, give and live shamanic-shifting of self and reality in your own ways, for the better and better. Life-journey towards (and shamanic dream) the best, shamanic-shifting new potentials and possibilities into our world, wherever you are."

Any now catches me up to here on the story of my life journey

2010-06-11T14:55:00.006-05:00

Image via Wikipedia

I can get behind in blogging, or any worthy task, and still be caught up in any given, chosen present moment...when I allow myself to be caught up. All here-now space-time coordinates are uniquely perfect, full of all-there-is and all things necessary, each arranged in a singular, particular, one-of-a-kind, interconnecting, uncoiling web that is always, miraculously yet naturally, balanced, overall.

Since March I've been grabbing gardening gigs, key features of my earth-medicine, calendrics and geomancy apprenticeships to many, many wise and beneficent green, brown, purple, pink, blue, yellow and red life-spirit teachers. Plant, mineral and bug spirits guide me almost daily, under their humble, inexplicable physical forms, into new understandings of nature (and my human nature) as I work. With work like this, I never want for play.

Gardening is calling is me outside, detouring my life journey around my desk and computer more often. Our crew gets rained out occasionally, however.

From ground handling at the airport I'm accustomed to working through rain showers and storms so I wouldn't mind. But when I walk through soaked, puddly flower beds I leave deep, monstrous footprints.

These gardening days are opening into a new course of vocational study in horticulture and design with a master wild gardener. Maybe I can get him enthused over collaborating on a book about wild gardens and much more (with his knowledge, my writing). Such a book looks like a summer dream to store for deep winter activation.

I'm still reading and experiencing "Dance of Stones" by Kenn Day, an example of the best kind of shamanic book, because it's written as a sacramental story with an ordinary reality journey showing inner reality shifts that dance back out into everyday life. I will be ready to review it here (and on Amazon) in a few more days.

"Dance of Stones" isn't a new book, but I sense that I am taking in the sights of this "shamanic road trip" just when I can appreciate the deeper lessons of the adventure most.

Yesterday, in a garden near Big Cedar Lake, I was surprised and delighted to meet a new (to me) nature companion, Box Elder Bug, a.k.a. Boisea trivittata, of the true bugs. Despite this insect's attention calling bright, fiery red and charcoal black markings, I intuited cool, flowing harmlessness and imagined hearing simple, happy humming.

I wonder what doable ways of living simply and cooperatively I might begin to learn on a shamanic journey to this creature's spirit.

Shamanic meditation, tour-guided or open-ended

2010-06-01T12:16:00.006-05:00

Image via Wikipedia

"Shamanic Meditations - Guided Journeys for Insight, Vision, and Healing" by Sandra Ingerman

"Dreamtime Return" by Steve Roach

I received a review copy of Sandra Ingerman's "Shamanic Meditations" weeks ago, and now, finally, I am writing my opinions about it.

The "Shamanic Mediations" CD set consists of introductory lectures on Ingerman's interpretation of contemporary shamanism as a spiritual path to healing and beyond, for self and the world, and several guided shamanic exercises. Her approach is similar to Michael Harner's Foundation for Shamanic Studies interpretations on most key points, around the topics she covers in this set, though she has expanded and diverged from the FSS in other books and presentations.

There are seven script-guided shamanic experiences, journeys or meditations, counting the final "Word blessings" track.

Talking, talking along with drumming (or other percussion) and drumming or rattling periods (for listeners to experience the step by step instructions) alternate during the guided shamanic exercises. Ingerman speaks slowly, distinctly and evenly enough while presenting the material, but I found the sound of her voice more distracting than trance-enhancing, though I cannot explain why.

The percussion periods are interrupted after a minimum of moments for spirit-world interaction. It is helpful to learn to shamanize during shorter whiles, though. Being able to access and embody spirit presence quickly amid everyday situations or crises allows modern shamans to begin transformations for the better immediately from within.

The first CD ends with lower and upper world journeys. The middleworld journey on the second CD is followed by a shamanic initiation into oneness, then spirit-eyes world observing is followed by grounding. I liked the spirit-eyes and grounding tracks better than the oneness initiation.

I couldn't imagine the oneness initiation track serving as a sufficient shamanic initiation, though it begin or add to an introduction to someone's quest for initiatory experience(s). Initiatory challenges or ordeals, small to huge (momentary to years-long), can be sought in life's wildernesses (even in cities), but often intrude spontaneously, shockingly and ineffably "upon same-old-same-old" routines.

And, the "oneness" being sought through this meditation was more like the dissolving-ego, world-transcending (eastern) type rather than the ego-spiritualizing, world-transforming (western) type I have grokked and lived through. Eastern and western spiritual ways can intersect, pass through or include one another, of course, and there need not be any arguing about which is better.

The spirit-eyes and grounding tracks were simply more do-able and fun for me. The journeys to the three realms were similar to what I experienced in FSS, or FSS-influenced, workshops, except for the ongoing guiding and shorter percussion periods.

Adapting or veering away from FSS methods, because I lived and practiced my particular (peculiar?) shamanic ways (using my own words to describe the experiences) for years before I encountered any modern western shamanism teachers or organizations, I have used guided imagery combined with customized hypnosis inductions and scripts successfully to lead various kinds of shamanic meditations. But no two of these have ever been alike and this isn't the usual way I practice or teach.

Recording a series of guided shamanic experiences for wide distribution is a challenge I haven't (yet?) felt ready or eager for.

Usually, for journeywork, after an intention-focusing period, I offer several guiding suggestions ahead of an uninterrupted 15-30 minute period of drumming and/or rattling with bells (or another droning or singing sonic driver).

I think Ingerman's "Shamanic Meditations" can help many open shamanic ways and continue to be guided by spirit and spirits from there, developing individualized methods. The exercises Ingerman presents on this set cover a lot of otherworld territory.

But some might find themselves revving up into beta-wave mode (rather than drifting towards shamanic states of consciousness) during Ingerman's contemporary shamanism discourses, then distracted by her frequent directions and suggestions throughout the guided (shamanic-style) meditations.

What sounds do I prefer as a carrier for shamanic meditation (including journeying but encompassing many other connecting techniques)?

The two CD set "Dreamtime Return" by Steve Roach has been a favorite brainwave shifting background for my own formal shamanic experiencing sessions since 1988 (when it was released). I play one or the other CD for longer journeys or go in and out of 15-30 minute journeys naturally, without a call-back signal. I drum or rattle and dance or sing to it, or not.

These sound-scapes were inspired by traditional Aboriginal chants and percussion on Roach's first trip to Northern Australia. I can listen this double album's variegated electronic mural for hours, without listening actively or ever quite getting used to it.

For visitors who come here to journey, or connect directly with spirit and spirits by some other method, such as art-play or dance, I often play one of the "Dreamtime Return" CDs quietly in the background (in repeat mode), and drum over it, with or without rattle or bells, for definite periods of trance work.

I have found other shamanic journey albums useful, but I will save mentioning those for another day's blogging.

Most often, I enter shamanic states of consciousness on purpose to ordinary-reality sounds and other sensory input, traveling or floating upon and within whatever vibrations are happening around me in the present moment, always a blend of chaos and repetition.

When my environment seems too chaotic for shamanic purposes, I tap with a finger to add more repetition. Overload can be an effective trance inducer for me, also.

When I find the sights, sounds and smells of the situation at hand annoying or disturbing, I can usually dance or sing into shamanic experience through or on those emotional energy waves, another (open-ended) way of shamanic shifting myself and my reality.

Note: Amazon links contain Companions Circle's affiliate code.

Book Review: 'Awakening to the Spirit World'

2010-05-20T21:31:00.009-05:00

Image by law_keven via Flickr

Update 5/30: I'm adding on to my review of "Awakening to the Spirit World" that I found the accompanying shamanic journey CD useful for sessions. The drumming pace was in my favorite range and I often rattle or play some other second percussion instrument while I drum.

I like track three best, with the bermimbau rhythm, probably because I didn't have anything similar already. I have used all the tracks in order, for a longer journey with a intention setting departure, two 15 minute segments to lower and upper realms, and a longer middle-realm mission.

Next I might shuffle the tracks and see how that goes. More often than not I use imaginary or ambient sounds to journey by, but this CD is OK by me.

Original post: Earlier this year, I received a review copy of "Awakening to the Spirit World - The Shamanic Path of Direct Revelation" by Sandra Ingerman and Hank Wesselman. Both authors are popular shamanic writers and workshop presenters.

Writing a review of a shamanic book can take me weeks, because experiencing and processing the teachings around my full schedule takes that long. Providing review copies to journalists and bloggers and pitching write-ups is OK by me as a way to promote a shamanic book (or any book). But whoever sent my copy may gave given up on me after this longer-than-usual delay.

About all shamanic books, I advise taking what you read, un-literally, as further suggestions and alternative perspectives about this universal set of practices, not final (or even authoritative) words. The only way to learn shamanic ways is through your own shamanic experiences with spirit, according to your understanding of spirit and spirits. I expect Ingerman and Wesselman would agree.

Shamanic book reading can add wisdom and understanding after the lifelong shamanic journey for knowledge and power has begun.

"Awakening to the Spirit World" is a well-written, engaging introduction to contemporary shamanism. Experienced practitioners are likely to find insights, inspiration and ideas from a read, too.

Step-by-step exercises give readers many opportunities to receive teaching on each topic directly from spirit. The book comes with a drumming CD for entering shamanic trance. Shamanic notables Carol Proudfoot-Edgar, Tom Cowan, Alberto Villoldo and Jose Luis Stevens give follow-up comments.

This book introduces most, if not all, of the spiritual and social roles and functions of shamans around this world's cultures, through prehistory, history and now.

I recommend skimming over the definitions and opinions about history and metaphysics expressed by the authors and guest contributors, taking them in as more experts' points of view and beliefs to consider and file for future reference, before turning almost all attention to the many interesting, re-creative methods and exercises the authors present.

Getting caught up in unproven, possibly unprovable, explanations and speculations (say, about Christian theology or the Druids or new scientific paradigms) is a temptation to dismiss at every turn on the shamanic path, I find. Anyone who relishes debates around theological or historical questions relating to shamanic principles and practices will find much to agree or disagree with in this book, but it wasn't written to generate arguments.

When I flipped open the book for a first look, I noticed an example distraction. Ceremony is described as formal, complicated and restrictive and ritual as simple, free-flowing and spirit-moved. But the etymologies of those words — that jump up and resonate for a "Wordie" like me, who studies ancient languages to learn deeper word meanings — show the terms can be used interchangeably. I have heard and read the ceremony-ritual distinction being taught dogmatically the other way around, plenty of times. Still, making a distinction, somehow, between the two modes of operating is valid and instructive (maybe even necessary).

Anyway, shamanic ways spiral around mystery and paradox, so no one will get far without learning to shamanize amid ordinary contradictions. "Awakening to the Spirit World" shows this truth vividly.

I have met many workshop participants who practice contemporary shamanism as a neo-pagan and/or new-age path towards spiritual liberation (sometimes called self-mastery or self-realization). Others tell me they categorize shamanic healing with alternative and complimentary (also called holistic) medicines. Some visitors to my practice have told me they began studying shamanic ways to become "psychics" or to understand and participate in "paranormal" or "supernatural" happenings.

The authors of "Awakening to the Spirit World" seem to emphasize and blend the first two, liberation and holistic healing (of earth and the planet's ecosystems, as well as community and self). They also attempt to tie contemporary shamanism to indigenous traditions and established religions throughout the book.

I agree with Ingerman and Wesselman that shamanic direct spiritual experience and the methods and techniques of shamans are natural for human beings, having evolved with humankind, and some or all of them can can be activated and developed (to lesser or greater degrees, in individual ways) by people from many backgrounds and circumstances and adapted to any life purpose, within or aside from an established religion.

I recommend "Awakening to the Spirit World," as a helpful, all around introduction to contemporary shamanism, through my take on this gigantic, umbrella topic that is too huge to be an -ism at all (and I'm sure the authors would agree on that), differs.

Letting go of direct ties to traditions or religions, I practice shamanic ways of ongoing revelation to revel on purpose in earthly incarnation and shift physical-material, earthy life towards funner dreams, songs, dances and shapes. I shamanize to transform, not transcend.

My way of the shaman(s) begins and ends (like the authors' versions) in dreaming change, but diverges further into creative and expressive arts, traveling alongside the shaman as innovative, visionary (even "outsider") artist or troubling, prophetic jester or fool. So my favorite sections of "Awakening to the Spirit World," are Chapter 7, about the traditional shaman as artist and Chapter 8, about working with light and sounds.

I am still experiencing this book's companion set of two CDs, "Shamanic Meditations, Six Guided Journeys for Deepening Your Connection to Spirit" and will post a review of it, too, soon.

Note: The Amazon link to the book includes Companions Circle's affiliate code.

Old shamanic dream notes I found

2010-05-17T19:15:00.003-05:00

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I. The shamanic companions I call my UFO Airport Visitors fly through my shamanic dreams again, teaching me how to view their universe and see alternative realities beyond my ordinary and non-ordinary universal "settings" for experiencing. These encounters take place in dreams of General Mitchell International Airport in Milwaukee.

So I am not being abducted, though I am being taken for a ride. Next, I visioned a parallel Earth of wondrous beauty and harmony that was natural yet advanced. My guides called it "a version (of this planet) where the people cooperated voluntarily and diverted the asteroid strike" — and I marveled at the dynamic, childlike interplay of inner and outer technologies and co-creative, alchemical blending of nature and art all its denizens enjoyed.

Here is a link about Alien Abduction - A Shamanic Perspective On UFOs that gives another view.

II. Many healthy foods appeared in last night's dreams, each communicating its own flavor of this message: Avoid lists of dos and don'ts about nutrition and remember nothing grows on Earth without potential benefits. Bless what you eat and digest without fear.

Here is a link about The World's Healthiest Foods.

III. Soup dreaming: I and everyone and everything are ingredients in a deep cauldron. I begin awakening as the simple ingredient I am heats up and jumps in the bubbles, even as I flow around and round in the soup without any say-so. Then, I notice the same ingredients keep flowing in not-quite-repetitive spiral-like patterns around me. I begin to detect an interflowing unity of all-that-is cooking and realize that I am merging happily with the currents shifting me through this porridge.

As the simmering continues, I discover I can swim and change the taste and consistency by just my little bit that miraculously changes everything because of the butterfly effect. I begin to see, hear, feel and sense the determined freedom of the chaotic, churning flow of the whole mess of pottage and get an inkling of the spoon and, suddenly, just a glimpse a hand stirring.

How shocked I am to see it's me, just when this bigger magnitude "me" falls into dreaming it's all — chefs and soups in multi-dimensions, all shape-shifting into one another — only one edge of a leaf steeping, just another bitty, crucial, fractal fragment of one complex, dynamic, goodness-generating Grail of Grails.

And this LIFE concoction gets spicier and more delicious, day by day.

Here is a link to one answer to the question, about ordinary-reality life on Earth, "What is primordial soup?

May Day Poem: Bottled and Un-bottled Messages

2010-05-07T20:07:00.003-05:00

As I stroll this city's may day, windswept lakeshore dunes I notice
a crooked trail of message-less bottles, tossed away aimlessly,
cast down by who knows who...?
who used to live somewhere nearby (but who remembers where?)
who visited a while ago (and who remembers when...?)

So many message-less bottles, discarded to float and roll around our world for now and almost forever...!

Wondering over the circumstances before and after the whys
and the hows or the "Who cares?" of so much half-emptiness
bobbing then coming to rest as litter before my meandering feet and gazing eyes
among the beach's crypto-crystals and overgrown-slimes

...tingles the edges and depths of my imagination...
"That one...almost half-full with cloudy water...yet
almost two thirds empty with air and mystery...!"

So a playful attention-shift pauses and stills me
amid my small world's garbage strewn sands and sticky situations, just long enough
that I begin to dream and hear anew...
faint but clear...within and beyond the ins and outs of breaking waves

universal un-bottled songs drifting yet dancing along

Shamanic dream: Weeds singing out recipes

2010-04-28T12:36:00.002-05:00

Image by gmayfield10 via Flickr

Since mid-March I have earned a significant percentage of my living by gardening, a dream job where I can learn about and from old and new plant pals, faithful friends from my childhood and fresh budding buddies. Most of these green companions are known as "weeds" and some are called "invasive" by scientists and officials.

What grows out of proportion in everyday circumstances can teach and heal also, in ordinary and non-ordinary ways.

I can pull up weeds enthusiastically, while noting with pleasure and admiration the truculent vitality and unrestrained beauty of these plants.

Many years ago, through shamanic dreams, I grokked that (earthy as well as many extraterrestrial) plants, though rooted to a location, are spiritually and psychically flexible, able to give themselves up generously and re-creatively for food, medicine and decoration (and even revel ferociously in dying and death). Plants trek, float, soar and sleep as seeds and can withdraw their photosynthetic life-flows instantly to other places and times, when someone commits carelessness or harm (and for many other wise or mysterious "whys").

I am not intending to express anthropomorphism here, because I mean plants life-shift according to the cosmic and natural laws of their essential be-ings and ordinary existences, in their own "vegetable ways" that humans can only intuit notions and inklings of along this earth journey.

Superimposing human thoughts, emotions and actions onto plant-kind(s) by imagining or fantasizing on purpose can deepen understanding. But such fun exercises might hinder knowing and lead to fallacy if the results are taken seriously or literally, instead of playfully.

Which weeds were dreaming songs into me this week? Dandelions and garlic mustard have been drawing my child-like attention aside, inviting me to eat them and even singing out recipes. Now the knotweed I am encouraging in back of my space is beginning to hum along.

These dreams from plant spirits are entertaining me with tantalizing recipe hints and images rather than distinct formulas. My attempts to transcribe the melodies and words of the recipe-songs before I return from dreaming to ordinary consciousness have not (so far) produced practical, publishable recipes.

But the musical alchemies being imparted through the colorful dances and phrases I experience are nourishing my soul and inspiring me to investigate the succulent concoctions that others have devised featuring dandelions, garlic mustard, knotweed and other edible weeds.

Juxtapositions as shamanic-incidences

2010-04-08T15:28:00.007-05:00

As a foundation "beat" I keep up a daily and seasonal prayer cycle, my shamanic version of a church "daily office" and liturgical calendar" that evolves with and revolves around current events. Along with others in a widespread circle of prayer-shifters (both known and unknown to me), I shamanize during several regular but flexible periods, day by day.

I consider any ordinary reality juxtapositions I notice between these observances, no matter how weird, to be shamanic-incidences (of many kinds) — messages, callings, bridges and shifts (of dreaming, dancing and shaping life) — and I bring them in to the next shamanic prayer, meditation and action. Just one example: The Pope washing priests' feet, amid scandals, on April Fool's Day (a special holiday in my independent, shamanic micro-church) under the Passover Full Moon of release from plagues and slavery...and of high tides washing up gifts from the deeps...and much more.

On purpose, I pretend ecstatically that any awareness shift from noticing and consciously re-connecting distant beings, places and events shifts my reality, the world and the universe towards healing and FUN by that little "much" (backwards and forwards, as well as outwards and inwards, through all realms, directions, dimensions and orders of space-time).

A tiny shift can open a world-sized loophole for changes for the better to flow through. Visible changes may take generations to grow and show. But (as I have declared often) the mustard-seed (Planck-length?) -sized openings whereby any of us can give permission for new stretches of LIFE's seamless garment begin at any here and now, with any earthly ("small-s") shaman's momentary, purposeful micro-shift.

Declaring shamanic-incidences throughout the day is another simple, easy and fun spiritual practice for instigating powerful, momentous dream and shape shifts any day, every day.

Shamanic vernal equinox spiritual parade practice

2010-03-20T09:20:00.000-05:00

Image by Indy Kethdy via Flickr

Noticing the horizon points of sunrise and sunset move southward for winter and northward for summer has inspired a shamanic exercise I find encouraging.

I imagine each place where the sun "touches" the perimeter of my extended neighborhood as the entry and exit gates of a universal gift bestowing spirit-parade.

From any particular place on earth, because our planet's axis tilts, the sun appears to travel from the winter solstice southern extreme to summer the summer solstice northern extreme as we orbit around it, bringing darkest to lightest days, with spring and autumn equinoxes of almost equal night and day. Light strikes and shadow falls upon and between prominent buildings and trees on my block help me remember to pause and attend to the changing solar route and welcome the soul empowering, benefaction flinging march-past of spirit and spirits.

Taking a moment to shaman-talk each day's sun-journey into a consciously-customized shower of blessings, tossed upon me, my neighborhood and the world (as I know it) by a processing spiritual entourage is fun. Day-dreaming this on cloudy days requires determination. If I forget at dawn, I may do it in retrospect.

Perhaps the end- and mid-point passages, like today's vernal equinox, properly stir more fanfare, wonder and ritual. I began this spiritual parade practice some years ago on an "ordinary" March day, when I realized that for shamans — who must experience life marching locally and universally at once — all days must be holidays, almost-equally worthy of celebration and ceremony.

Does chemical dependency sidetrack shamans?

2010-03-12T16:38:00.000-06:00

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

2010-02-27T15:41:00.010-06:00

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

2010-02-17T14:24:00.002-06:00

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.

Shamanic journey the interstellar medium

2010-02-10T12:42:00.005-06:00

Image via Wikipedia
In my Scientific Blogging column I wrote about the new interstellar medium map that has been published (PDF) in Astronomy and Astrophysics and widely reported around the Net. Because even the press release was highly technical, I linked up a college course introduction (PDF) to the interstellar medium, by Richard W. Pogge, Professor of Astronomy at the Ohio State University, Department of Astronomy, as background information.

In the ordinary-reality universe there is star-stuff and other-stuff, unevenly scattered through the wilderness of all that is. In the 20th century, Caroline and William Herschel and other astronomers realized that the space between stars in the universe was not a vacuum.

In the most widely accepted theories of the interstellar medium, the energy of supernova outbursts swirl together with outflowing winds from clusters bright, newborn stars to open pockets thinner, but not at all empty, space-time.

Non-ordinary reality is heterogeneous, too, through all the processes, cycles and patterns of life evolving and transforming into new life, even while its eternal fullness, paradoxically, is unity-itself. But within the vast, multi-level, multi-everything realms of spirit(s) and soul(s) where shamans journey and dream, voids and abysses (as well as The Void and The Abyss, according to many travelers) are part of the scape and scope of it all.

After I built a launch platform and gate-vehicle during a shamanic moon dream, I began venturing into the spiritual sides of the interstellar medium to explore its thinner places and empty spaces. My intention is retrieval and reconnection of soul-help and spirit-healing for Earth, Moon and Sun, and side-effect blessings for all celestial bodies residing or passing though Earth's neighborhood.

The vast, dancing interplay among beings and places at all orders, directions, levels, dimensions, kinds and sizes of existence, from the most macro- to sub-microscopic, are generating wild shamanic rides out there, so far.
Book suggestion:
The Georgian Star: How William and Caroline Herschel Revolutionized Our Understanding of the Cosmos (Great Discoveries)

Shamanic Moon dreams all February

2010-02-05T14:10:00.002-06:00

Image by Alan Miles NYC via Flickr

Maybe the freeze and thaw cycles of February have churned up more frequent Moon dreams for me. I have visioning Moon crystals, too.

February is the only month that can pass without a Full Moon, but this year Earth's Moon will bid a full good-bye to February on the month's final day. Like every month, February always has Dark Moon moments and there is always the Moon's far-side (or "other side") to consider.

The February 1 announcement that NASA's Constellation project (to return earthlings to the Moon) has been shelved in a drastic direction change to funding private companies to develop space travel (and space tourism) instead, might be stirring up my recent Moon journeying dreams as much as the weather.

Shamans can connect with any phase that the beings, places or flows of the present moment happen to be shifting through. Our Moon's dark, little-known and unseen regions may be shamanic journeyed or dreamed to, as well as the brighter, better known areas. Loopholes and pathways to unimagined possibilities can be conjured amid any current circumstances.

February is also Black History Month, also known as African American History Month, and National Breast Cancer Awareness Month, celebrated with pink ribbons (a color vibration of wonder because it may not exsist). Saint Agatha of Sicily, whose breasts were chopped off during torture sessions (and healed later, by an apparition of Saint Peter) is celebrated on February 5 in many in Christian denominations that follow the western spiritual calendar.

With the souls of saints, activists and researchers who have traveled ahead in spirit, I shall continue my shamanic Moon adventures all month. In my dreams, I shall seek awareness adjustments, healing medicines and surprises hidden in pink rocks.

Have you ever touched Moon rock or Moon meteorite?

Hunting and dancing with shadows on Groundhog Day

2010-02-02T16:40:00.002-06:00

Image by Barbara L. Hanson via Flickr

Reveling in the present happy holiday synergy of Imbolc, Candlemas (also known as the Presentation of Jesus in the Temple) and Groundhog Day, I lit candles amid clouds and sought the wisdom of dancing shadows. This afternoon my colleague the Tortoise Cat and I saw no signs of our shadows outdoors.

A shamanic journey can head intentionally into the shadows of a life, event or situation, circling around and zeroing in on a period or theme, to shed light on any given present troubles. Shadows may frighten but they signal the undaunted liveliness of Spirit's lights, radiating a new now, re-creating this world's dreams and shapes from the ongoing collapse of open-ended fields of darkness.

Today, back indoors after sweeping snow from the back doorway, I shamanized by a simpler technique, in fun. I played, capered and spun with shadows amid candle lights, then lay down, relaxed on purpose and waited for wise messages and spiritual strength to arise in mind, heart and body.

Meteoric shamanic journey return

2010-01-21T09:15:00.001-06:00

Image by Navicore via Flickr

After a deep sea shamanic encounter, a wild space ride:

I dream-dived two-and-one-half miles down into the Kairei Indian hydrothermal vent field in the central Indian Ocean to interview Crysomallon squamiferum the scaly-foot gastropod with the unique, extra-tough, three-layered shell. Scaly Foot is teaching materials scientists to build invincible armored suits and vehicles.

The iron-clad, cushion-padded snail's spirit presented me with an old, dented but whole, abandoned shell, whose original inhabitant had shapeshifted. This rare, simple gift represented psychological assistance for growing thicker skin and stronger courage, as well as soul wound healing and ongoing protection for all in my world who desire it.

After giving thanks and heading back, I found myself returning from the non-ordinary ocean floor to ordinary reality upon a spiritual meteoroid.

I wondered. What happens if a spirit-asteroid (or comet) collides with Earth?

In this dream-ride I sat upon a tremendous chunk of salt crystal. I could see ahead, somehow, that our course would graze the sun and glide by Earth.

As we coasted between Earth and the Moon, Albatross flew out to meet me and winged me the rest of the way home.

When I gazed up, I saw the meteor flash. The snail shell sparkled and gleamed in shades and tints of blue on the palm of my hand.

Shamanic flying and diving to deep sea, scaly-footed gastropodic dreams

2010-01-18T19:41:00.003-06:00

Image by dimidam via Flickr

Human beings continue to learn exoskeleton technology from animal companions.

Today on DigitalJournal.com I reported research by MIT materials scientists on the scaly-foot snail, Crysomallon squamiferum, as a model for improving military armor.

Scaly-Foot's three-layered shell, unlike other natural or man-made exoskeletons, allows it to survive a crab's powerful, tenacious (possibly week-long) vise-like squeeze. Scaly-Foot diffuses the mechanical energy of Crab's grip into the ocean waves.

Living in deep, predator-filled, highly acidic waters near heat-blasting hydrothermal vents in the Indian Ocean, Scaly-Foot has grown adept at dissipating the natural, ongoing energy-patterns of everyday challenges and expert at preserving what matters most.

Tonight I will shamanic journey to this extraordinary gastropod's wise spirit (within Spirit) seeking protective assistance for peaceful, life-improving or adventurous purposes to balance the combat applications. Albatross and Penguin will wing and dive me parts of the way.

Unusual request: How to cast with Swarovski crystals

2010-01-11T11:10:00.002-06:00

Image by orsorama via Flickr

Casting or circling with the help of ornaments, accessories or miniatures?

As a neighborhood and universal shaman (written with a small "s") I tend to open circles to Spirit and Spirits rather than "cast" symbols and/or beings around in a protective or proscriptive pattern. The word cast brings many images up, besides the magical (prayer or meditation) actions of casting a spell or circle.

But intention is key when creating sacred space for shamanic journeying or placing crystals in divination or grounding any kind of inner change with outward, visible and tangible signs.

Focusing upon differences in terminology can illuminate unnoticed perspectives--or stop conversation. Anyway, I received an email asking how I would cast Swarovski crystal figurines in shamanizing. I wrote back, asking for clarification, but my email bounced back.

Swarovski is a company that produces precision-cut lead glass crystal. It was founded by Austrian glass cutter and jeweler Daniel Swarovski in in Wattens, Austria.

Certainly the bright figurines inherited by my mystery inquirer must embody patterns of paying close attention and working accurately and carefully on one chosen task at a time. Many cultural and singular shape and color meanings, perhaps new sets of correspondences for each person who gazes, must find room to inhabit each many-faceted piece.

I imagine this approach could ring true for any brand of crystal sculpture or bead. The crystal under consideration here is lead glass, which is denser and more refractive than ordinary glass, and not microscopically crystalline at all.

Lead crystal took on its name by resembling natural crystal. This suggests a successful synergy of nature and art, or nature and nurture.

Gemstone and semi-precious crystals, cut and carved, in agreement with their symmetry systems, would reflect their distinctive light-shifting attributes into any healing or transforming practice, just as well, and add the clear-cut virtues of their different sacred geometries to the spiritual reality-shift being sought.

Shamans can work with helping beings of all sorts, conditions and substances. Some of my favorites are plastic -- and scratched and dented.

For a shamanic journey -- the multipurpose practice I recommend most often -- I would arrange the crystal figures, according to the topic being shamanized, into a sacramental gateway to travel through into non-ordinary reality, via active imagining or stay-awake dreaming.

Neighborhood shamanism is universal

2009-12-27T13:25:00.003-06:00

Image by (Bill and Mavis) - B&M Photography via Flickr

My unfinished business on the Net, 2009:

In March I began constructing a shamanic teaching website/ebook called Your-Neighborhood-Shaman.net, linked to Squidoo lenses. This project continues through the lenses, but I have closed the website and given up the domain. My understanding keeps changing, so much of the content needs revision and lenses serve the purpose better than a static website.

What I am calling neighborhood shamanism differs from all published traditional and contemporary interpretations of shamanic ways, including Core Shamanism and other (Michael) Harner-style approaches. But any single neighborhood shamanism may overlap one or more of the world's (diverse, individual or collective) shamanisms, and will interconnect with all of them, somehow.

In my dream, each neighborhood shamanism is specific to one shaman (preferably written with a small "s"), who may work in any field, under any title, who lives to bridge the non-ordinary and ordinary realms of reality within h/er closest community, for the benefit of self, neighborhood and all. All life purposes center around bridging spirit and matter to shift life towards the best.

Every neighborhood includes the subatomic to gigantic and the particular to collective--backwards and forwards through time and radiating through all directions of space.

S/he draws upon many sources, from any bailiwick.

S/he may be inspired by other shamanisms and encouraged by other shamans, locally and worldwide, though inward spiritual and outward physical teaching. Teaching is experiential, open-ended and ongoing.

I envision an unceasing, unbounded circle of circles, voluntarily and individualistically uniting all neighborhood shamans, of every when and where--mostly unknown, non-famous and unpublished--coiling and spiraling, weaving and manifesting an ever shapeshifting, world-helping Universal Shamanism.

More unfinished projects and unmet goals:

I have changed the purpose (and URL) of my LiveJournal blog, a permanent paid account which was inactive from August until now. As soon as I decide upon a look I like, this journal will be dedicated to freelance writing and freelance anything--my experiences and general information and resources--as well as to any topic I happen to be wondering over, researching or keeping for future reference.

Also I am still getting around to deleting or hiding unused web presences, fun experiments I initiated, but have abandoned, along my Net adventure. Any seldom-visited profiles, listserves and other websites that require updating to remain accurate or useful will disappear (or be forwarded to one of the "keepers") soon.

The goal is a short-list of several places where I post daily or weekly.

Rediscovery Review of the Green Pharmacy Herbal Handbook

2009-12-17T16:01:00.007-06:00

Image via Wikipedia

Here's a book to add to a healing library:

While whiling away several hours at the home of a relative earlier this week, I noticed an old, water damaged copy of THE GREEN PHARMACY by American botanist James A. Duke, PhD on the coffee table and began an engrossing, self-educational re-read. Now I am about to buy an updated version of the book, because I found too much useful information to remember -- hundreds of remedies and dozens of recipes, craftily laced with stories.

James A. Duke is an expert on botanical medicine. He developed the USDA's Phytochemical and Ethnobotanical Databases and has studied healing foods, herbalism and plant spirit medicine with natural, folk and shamanistic healers worldwide for many decades.

Generous introductory chapters cover safety and how-to grow, forage and buy healing herbs, defined by Duke as any healing or ailment preventing food. Most of the book is organized around an alphabetic listing of health troubles, but it reads like novel.

Duke repeats pertinent information each time an herb is recommended, but the informal, anecdotal narrative flows smoothly around these helpful redundancies. I skipped around, flipping backwards and forwards as questions arose. The book ends with an entertaining yet still instructive autobiographical postscript.

Perusing the older edition, I did find myself lamenting the lack of any specific citations of published studies to go with Duke's brief allusions to scientific research supporting or discouraging the use of particular herbs. I don't know if the newer version adds any of these references. An appendix for these, as well as a table, organized alphabetically by herb names would be a useful enhancements.

Shamanic view of the differences between Super Foods & Healing Foods

2009-12-02T10:01:00.007-06:00

Image via Wikipedia

What are the differences between Super Foods and Healing Foods?

From a complementary and alternative medicine perspective, Super Foods (often called Superfoods) are recommended for almost everyone as preventative medicine. Eating Superfoods often is thought or theorized to ward off many diseases at once and even slow aging processes.

Super Foods help promote health and wellness in general.

Healing Foods may also be Superfoods and vice versa -- the two categories overlap often.

But herbalists and other complementary and alternative health (and folk medicine) practitioners, as well as some medical doctors, may recommend specific herbs, vegetables and fruits (and potentially any food) as healing foods, to help treat or prevent specific ailments or conditions.

As a neighborhood and internet shamanic practitioner, often I request from spirit and spirits an inclusive list of Superfoods and Healing Foods. However this is done on a case by case basis, treating each request as unique to the space-time-spirit situation (here/now moment) at hand.

I journey or dream on a particular intention, to receive a long list of foods that are preventative and beneficial in general, for an individual's shift towards healthier diet choices, and for a shorter list of edible interventions, just for h/er relief from specific health troubles.

This food shamanizing usually happens after an initial shamanic journey or dream has shown me what kinds of further help from spirit and spirits to seek.

Both food lists almost always expand into a third category that I will call "shamanic foods" (though I do not mean to generate another technical term or enduring bit of jargon).

Shamanic foods, for me, are (health and wellness promoting) Superfoods and Healing Foods (specific natural remedies) given by spirit and spirits especially for -- and perhaps, at lest temporarily, only for -- the individual and intention that is appearing before me, requesting assistance.

Shamanic foods and the instructions for their use might or might not follow -- or might include but expand upon -- other guidelines published by alternative and complementary or folk or standard medical model healers.

The shamanic foods on the lists I receive are almost always found or grown locally.

Often the consuming of shamanic foods (which may also be Superfoods and/or Healing Foods) is sacramental -- a tangible, outer, ordinary-realty grounding of invisible, inner, non-ordinary blessing and spiritual healing effects.

Circles and loopholes -- and major shifts -- can happen!

Shamanic food remedies begin as interventions for one here/now situation.

However, if I later shamanic journey or dream over a situation that appears similar to me, and feel moved to ask of spirit and spirits, "Can you help this trouble the way you helped with so-and-so's problem before?" I might receive an OK to use the same shamanic food again, and even start using it as a shamanic intervention to offer to others before dreaming or journeying for specifics.

This is true for me for all shamanic interventions.

Also, I have been spiritually counseled that when two or three (or more) companions gather (becoming "the circle") and invoke any remedy from spirit and spirits that they can remember, through any method of prayer and meditation, it will be effective.

I understand that this works because the universe operates according to (and as) the formula of two and three (or more) agreeing as and becoming one.

Effectiveness always varies according to the free-will, attitudes and life-vibrations of all involved, from the least to greatest, in all realms of reality.

So all levels of minuscule to humongous and subtle to obvious shifts happen on earth and in heavens (and between) -- some of each -- in an instant, a year, a decade or a century or longer.

I have also been been told, that even if the gut, heart and mind (and soul) of a single individual agrees over a matter of concern, this universal formula activates a cosmic loophole.

So the potential and possibilities of any situation (and all beings beings within it, according to their free-will and living vibes) can expand, through spiritual circle-action, beyond the limits of all categories and lists.

Shamanic, symbolic meaning of crystal glasses and glass

2009-11-10T09:18:00.016-06:00

Image by Rich Anderson via

Throughout summer and now, into this autumn, I have collected shards of pottery and glass to arrange within the rock garden I began keeping last spring, outside the back door.

Clear, green, and brown bits of glass are the easiest to find. Blue, red and pink are rarer treasures.

Interpretations of color meanings are easy to find on the Net. I like to add "in the moment" meanings, as I am guided by spirit and spirits.

The tiniest fragments, including the sparkly jewels of car window safety glass, intermingle with red and black chunks of lava. I place larger glass chips sharp-side down, well out of the way of paws and feet, on either side of a meeting place for fancy, multicolored river stones and plainer gray to pale limestone and agate street-found rocks.

Broken or shattered containers remind me of alchemical processes finishing up and releasing new energy flows and patterns into the universe. Next, I remember and wonder over the Big Bang (or Bounce or Shift) itself.

Also, I am attracted to brokenness for the openness it brings--and for the damage to any pretense of perfection it assures.

Yesterday, another kind of broken glass presented itself. I found broken green, purple and clear lead crystal goblets scattered around a dumpster!

Cups have always carried deep meanings. Again, the shattering of them is usually creative and re-creative.

I am keeping these sharp, intensely scintillating splinters hidden within a covered baking pot in the sanctuary, while I shamanic journey and dream on their mythic or symbolic meanings.

I shall reflect a while, then wait and watch for clear or refracted messages to shine or glint.

Shamanic and other uses of Yellow Root

2009-10-28T17:49:00.015-05:00

Image via Wikipedia

I shamanic journeyed to a plant I had met in a dream, who was introduced by the name Yellow Root.

What healing help can Yellow Root give?

Yellow Root is part of the Buttercup Family and has, according to Drugs.com (and clinically speaking) no proven effectiveness in treating any ailments.

Taking Yellow Root internally during pregnancy is even cautioned against because one of its active components, the alkaloid berberine, might stimulate uterine activity.

In folk medicine 2g of the Yellow Root rhizome is made into a tonic or antibiotic and immunostimulant medicine for mouth and throat infections. It is used frequently to remedy childbirth and uterine troubles--when contractions were desired--and given as a sedative, hypotensive and choleretic. Sometimes Yellow Root was used to treat diabetes.

But Yellow Root is used by some as another name for Goldenseal--which contains berberine also, and is used by herbalists to treat most of the same conditions and more.

The Yellow Root I met was the low-growing subshrub with purple flowers, going by the scientific name of Xanthorhiza simplicissima and growing along shady riverbanks. Yellow Root's namesake yellow roots can be chewed for tonic effect but are usually boiled into a strong, bitter tea then sweetened with honey.

An important note/update, August 15, 2010: A commenter points out these two plants are completely different, despite the names being interchanged by some in common or informal usage, a switch which could confuse. While common-use name interchanging or confusing can link two beings in non-ordinary, spiritual and symbolic ways (useful to shamanizers), this connection does not hold up scientifically in ordinary reality and does not apply to uses based on physical components, such as herbal remedies, even though some herbalists use the two similarly.

The spirit of this Yellow Root had grown across my life and this dream to help me heal and transform several strong, bitter childhood memories of betrayal that were growing out of proportion and becoming troubling. Whenever my shamanic assistance is requested around a topic I suppose that whatever is challenging my visitor is living within me too, and I begin by dreaming on that.

Shamanic uses of Yellow Root, or any plant, might or might not match or overlap other uses in alternative and folk medicine. Always, I notice resonances between ordinary and non-ordinary uses.

I brewed, sweetened, and sipped the transformational tea in non-ordinary reality, shamanizing for myself in order to help the person who had come requesting spiritual assistance. I felt soothing strength in my throat for telling new stories of deeper understandings of past events, then abdominal pulsing, as if old shapes were flexing and dancing out of me.

I will do my best to connect with the plant in this world soon, too.
Yellow root is brightening up my life today and I am wearing a yellow shirt to ground and activate the shift.

What are the healing properties of Chalcopyrite crystals?

2009-10-16T17:10:00.008-05:00

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Crystal healing intuition-sheet on Chalcopyrite:

Chalcopyrite crystals are credited with diverse healing properties in folklore, metaphysics and alternative medicine, though medical science attributes reported improvements from crystal healing to the placebo effect.

Features

The metallic mineral Chalcopyrite (CuFeS2 or Copper Iron Sulfide, also known as Bornite) is commonly called Peacock Ore because its dark golden or brassy luster often shines with purple and green iridescent highlights. Chalcopyrite belongs to the tetragonal crystal system but occurs most often in massive form. It is an important source of copper.

Folklore

In folk medicine Chalcopyrite is suggested for hair loss prevention and as a remedy for throat, bronchial, lung, and brain ailments.

Image via Wikimedia Commons

Metaphysics

In metaphysics Chalcopyrite is associated with developing and deepening inner vision, freeing stuck spiritual and vital energy patterns, and grounding meditation, prayer and exercise.

Alternative Medicine

Healing properties of Chalcopyrite in alternative medicine include fever and inflammation reduction, DNA repair, and the protection of crystal and energy healers during sessions.

Alchemy

The elemental components of Chalcopyrite reveal a restorative alchemical process. Copper, associated with Venus, female energies and creativity, joins iron, the symbol of Mars, male energies and strength. Both are acted upon by sulfur, representing fusion within the Sun, radiant expansion of life and the soul’s transcendence of opposites.

Etymology

Chalcopyrite comes from the ancient Greek words khalkos (meaning copper) and pyrites (meaning fire striking stone). This etymology points to additional life transformation processes–containing, conducting, and igniting.

Where does the healing power of gems come from?

2009-10-03T09:48:00.008-05:00

The healing power of gems may never be proven scientifically because it is the metaphysical or symbolic properties of semi-precious and precious stones that are invoked as complementary and alternative medicine remedies.

Methods

The healing power of gems may be stirred up through personal, traditional, or published correspondences in numerology, sacred geometry, and astrology. Or combine shamanic methods with all or none of the above.

Shamanic Ways

To touch the healing power of minerals and crystals directly through shamanic experience, journey or dream into each gem or its representation in memory, imagination, or art. Shamanize to get to know the spirit of each stone.

Then shamanic journey or dream on a healing or beneficial change intention for yourself and others.

Meditation

Bring the healing power of gemstones into your mind, heart, and gut by meditating, through your favorite method. When you are full of healing power, circulate it through your soul and body, then radiate it outwards into your world.

Layouts

Create a shape with your healing crystals and stones, incorporating numerological, geometrical, and astrological associations, or not, as you are nudged by spirit and spirits. When ready, lie down within it for a shamanic journey, dream, or meditation on the healing or transformation you desire.

Or, lay the stones down in a smaller configuration on your altar or within other sacred space. Let this shape remain there for a while or disperse it right away, according to the nature and particulars of your prayer intention and how you are guided.

Agreement

Gems and stones are beings in the shamanic way of relating to life and the universe. When you need two or three to agree in prayer or shamanizing, they can be there for you!

Imagine that crystals and rocks are friendly ambassadors from the realm of the divine within, carrying healing gifts from heaven on earth.

Photo: KaCey97007/Flickr.com

Spirit definition is impossible

2009-10-03T09:22:00.018-05:00

WOW. I was asked to define spirit!

Coming up with a spirit definition to satisfy everyone is impossible, yet the exercise of trying to accomplish this task can deepen spiritual awareness.

Etymology

Our word spirit comes from a Latin word for both soul and breath, spiritus.

In Other Words

In ancient Greek spirit was pneuma (πνεύμα), also the word for breath which later came to mean spirit or soul.

In Sanskrit: The words akasha (the element filling and flowing around celestial realms) and ātman (breath in Indo-European but coming to mean soul, self, or ego in Hinduism and Buddhism) and prana (vital force or ) all express spirit.

The Hebrew words ruach (רוח; wind) and Ruach HaKodesh (רוח הקודש; divine wind) mean spirit and Holy Spirit.

In Chinese culture the word qi (air) meaning vital energy-flow can also express spirit.

From early on, in most (if not all) languages, spirit collected many meanings, connotations, and associations.

Interconnection

Spirit was usually linked to universal elements and vital functions.

Perhaps spirit definition began with wind breezing or water churning or earth quaking or fire crackling near a solitary someone hooked on pondering cosmic mysteries.

Spirits

In shamanic ways, as well as in many earth-centered and New Age religions, spirit is one and whole, yet is related to as an interconnecting and multi-dimensional many (many!) spirits.

Besides keeping company with animal spirits, shamans work with spirits of elements, minerals, plants, and many more kinds. Spirits can be visible or invisible; ordinary or non-ordinary; earthly, extra-terrestrial, celestial, or other-dimensional.

Caution

Spirit definition can easily be taken seriously or literally, which takes the fun out of it. BTW, my favorite word for spirit is FUN.

Placing dogmatic limits on spirit and spirits is as futile as trying to catch the wind, or collect the oceans in a bucket, or...go ahead and make up your own metaphor for it.

I am sure you already understand.

Oops! Because the spirits of Zemanta.com kept 'helping' I couldn't resist letting this post become a Wikipedia-fest.

Prakhar/Flickr.com

Shamanic Dreaming a Dragon

2009-09-24T13:23:00.005-05:00

Image via Wikipedia

Last night I dreamed strange basement noises! I woke up to visions and imaginings of a bright green dragon thrashing and thumping down there.

This building's basement is nicknamed 'the dungeon' by the property management company's maintenance staff. Once I recommended charging tourists admission for 15 minute tours of it as a House of Horrors.

The stairway down is under a padlocked outside crawlspace door under my back window. I have a key just in case I need to get to the circuit breaker panel.

I knew I had dreamed and imagined the green dragon as a shamanic experience. But, of course, this morning I ventured down into 'the dungeon' to investigate anyway.

Everything seemed as usual - a dim, dank, musty, labyrinthine mess. Shifting into a light trance I wandered through the cluttered rooms, blurring my eyes on purpose, tilting my head leftwards and rightwards, sneaking side glances all around.

But nothing jumped out at me or struck me as unusual. Just as I was about to climb back upstairs I was drawn towards the northeast corner directly under my sanctuary.

Then I spotted a cardboard box I had never noticed before, all by itself, up high on a built-in storage shelf. Coat hangers and papers were sticking out and it did not look interesting enough to bother with.

The business tenants of this building do not use the basement for storage. So I supposed this box had been left behind by a previous occupant of my space, which is leased as an apartment to allow this historic building to keep its 'mixed use' zoning (advantageous to the owner, somehow).

I reached up and over the side and pulled out college course notes about plate tectonics and a geology textbook, and then felt a bumpy, pottery-type surface. When I tugged this irregular object out, I was delighted to find myself holding a bright green 8 by 5 inch ceramic dragon!

Maybe last nights dream-commotion was this shiny mini-dragon in the basement, signaling its desire to reside in the sanctuary room instead of under it!

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Shamanic Raccoon Moment

2009-09-18T16:44:00.002-05:00

Image by Michael Scheltgen via Flickr

Raccoon visited! My colleague The Tortoise Cat has yet to update her blog and tell of her Raccoon adventure, so I will share my side of the story (that I already tweeted) about a visit from Raccoon on September 13th, a Sunday morning. Tortoise Cat is a sweet, bold, fierce little kitty, but a reluctant blogger.

We both savor the fresh, night breezes of summer and we start early and stay late. As the weather permits I sleep next to the screen door, most nights from June through September. It is the next best thing to stretching out under the urban light filtered clouds or stars. Tortoise cat sleeps on a chair nearby or watches for mice and other critters through the screen.

In the wee morning hours Tortoise Cat was fussing to go all the way outside so I let her sit on the steps, attached to her longer backyard string. I lay back down, remaining restfully alert, just in case. Too soon I heard her yowl and jumped up, though I was not too concerned.

As I opened the screen door to peer out, supposing she had tangled her string in the deck chair already while chasing a mouse and was calling for my assistance, a terrified, medium-sized Raccoon shoved me aside and rushed in! By the security floodlights shining through the window I stared, thoroughly amazed, at this hefty young fellow who was sitting up on my bedding with paws stretched towards me, mouth opening and closing, with what looked like tears moistening the dark fur mask around his glistening eyes.

I cannot say how I knew this Raccoon was a male. Tortoise Cat and I have met the neighborhood Raccoon family and are somewhat acquainted - at a distance. We catch sight of them often, stealth-ambling past us on the way to or from the dumpsters, usually between mid-night and 3AM. Raccoon mom is huge compared to her two bulky 'teenagers' who I (somehow) take for brother and sister. The three littler ones who run behind? I have yet to get any notion of their genders.

"Hey, little guy", I said, "that Tortoise Cat is LOUD but she's tiny. You're almost 4 times her size, so muster up your courage, young friend, and hurry back outside so your folks won't worry!"

My Raccoon guest appeared to agree and crawled cautiously back into the doorway and peered out, but froze when he saw the Tortoise Cat still blocking the steps. I called to Tortoise Cat to show courtesy to our guest and make way for Raccoon's safe passage by, but, as usual, she did not comply with my wise instructions, and stood (well, actually she sat) her ground and began emitting a low, eerie, rumbling, surround-sound synergy of moan, groan, and growl while her eyes glinted and glared.

Then Raccoon uttered a trilling screech, crawled up onto the railing, jumped down, then scurried gracefully through the bamboo bushes and back into into the safety and comfort of the deep night's shadowy shrubs and darker corners. His mother and siblings must have been waiting nearby.

I was wide awake and this encounter happened in ordinary reality. Yet, as Raccoon is a long-term shamanic helper, I know there were messages and gifts in this visit. I realized how great a privilege this was and I feel highly honored. One night (or day) soon I will remember a shamanic dream with Raccoon and learn more.

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Shamanize as a kaleidoscope, on the chaotic tension...

2009-09-03T11:57:00.002-05:00

Image via Wikipedia

Allowing poetry to dream into me is a shamanic way I used to practice more often. This free-verse poem - as it might be called by some - dreamed in with September. It seems more than a wee bit weird and nonsensical to me but that is the kind of poem I usually get.

Years ago I used to receive and write a shamanic free-verse poem every day - or, rather, words blown and strung together like this. Because I didn't call my shamanizing by any s-word or this sort of composition poetry when it started happening back in childhood. A high-school teacher assured me I was writing free-verse poetry but I called it 'word-juxtapositions' instead.

I don't recommend this as a once-a-day spiritual practice. It is too intense and does not make enough ordinary sense, and the temptation to re-work it into a more comprehensible form can hit hard.

As a shamanic poem I take this (like all the rest that came to me) as a whole, as a way of spirit-delivery of healing and transforming power, a container holding answers to prayer, that I don't need to (and should not try to) decipher or translate.

Shamanize as a kaleidoscope, on the chaotic tension...

between earthy limitation
just humming along
and cosmic springing-free, then

howl outlandishly...

between shaking containment...repetitive recombining of primary and secondary multi-colored building blocks
...and the next black and white, silver and gold, big-bang rainbow catastrophic surprise,
this universal serendipitous system of mercurial methods, always revealing itself

as just ordinary points

yet cosmic egg sets, of zeros and ones, set spinning around this expanding, accelerating circus circle,
though each radiating waving particle point of (visible and invisible) fields of resurrection is already spiraling probable
simultaneities inwards

and outwards...an infinity of infinities...

of infinities of orders of infinities...of parallel, perpendicular, tangential, and oblique yet ordinary, everyday, sharp fuzzy lines...
expressing worlds of thoughts, words, and deeds as complex designs of weaving
yet raveling multi-directions and multi-dimensions, eventually creating...

your Shaman Costume!

Oh let me only touch this flowing, glowing
super-asymmetrical, inexplicable, webby resonating deep space, material-energetic, earthy garment for a moment...
as the shaman passes amid the wild pressing crowds of expectant, jubilant confusion within me,

and wonder forever over the seamless holey wholly hol-y healing feel of it...
shimmering, glimmering, mysteriously holding and releasing so many sparkling arrays of vibrating

cooking vessels simmering uncertain, as yet undetermined, transformations

harmoniously jumping, falling, tumbling, dancing up and down and on and off this cliff,
or edge, or humpty-dumpty wall...singing into this abyss
thereby dream-seeding all of

this earth...the deeps, the seas, the lands, the skies...all commonplace,
known and unknown, sacred places...each stuffed with primary quintessentials,

every one of them hatching and scattering into wand-points

all over again, the same as always...
like never before.
(Patterns rattle, drum, and take steps while fringes fly...!)

The original shamans didn't...

2009-09-01T12:55:00.002-05:00

Image by jeloid via Flickr

LAST very long! They were soon assimilated or forgotten, then seemingly seamlessly replaced by the ordinary shamans who we call shamans today. The original shamans didn't...

Bow to authorities
Stick to old stories

This is why whatever shamanic teachings you receive through books, DVDs, workshops, gatherings, apprenticeships, mentoring, courses, and any of the ways that shamanism is - that is, that shamanic ways or shamanisms are - passed on are really, mostly or partly shamanistic, meaning not quite shamanic (not quite meaning 'almost but not quite' all the way to 'not by quite a lot'). The original shamans have all been magnified by space-time then stuffed into spacey-timeless myths, or they are perfectly unknown in this world, lost to consciousness through history's mists.

The original shamans are universal yet singular, living in the neighborhood but are not of it. The original shamans are NOT the keepers of stories - they receive and keep stories only in order to be the shifters of stories and the dreamers of new stories.

Many of the original shamans drew followers even though they kept saying "Go away now! Go on, go YOUR way. Go be your own shaman!" Except that the original shamans hadn't heard of the word shaman.

Many of today's ordinary shamans suppose that they are already living and representing the secret circle of the original shamans. But supposing is sub-posing, placing under, and that's just another kind of shaman-istic.

Shamanistic is as far as you get on the way of the shaman if you insist upon bowing to authorities and sticking to old stories - regardless of how many shaman-techniques you learn and initiations you receive, no matter how powerful these are. And shamanistic can be life healing and transforming enough, for now - or not.

If it's not...then DREAM an original shaman, within yourself, and dream your ceremony of giving away all your stories, and dream your next step after giving up on all your sources of authority. Then forget it and shift on. Or shift on and forget it. (Repeat this as necessary.).

Shamanic journey to the everyday world of your dreams and hopes!

2009-08-25T11:04:00.008-05:00

Image by Shamanic Shift via Flickr

Here is a shamanic journey my circle is taking: First clear and ground yourself in your usual, favorite way(s) - incense, herbal bath, nature walk, or however you do it. Open your sacred space-time circle and non-ordinary travel portal expectantly.

Rattle, drum, sing, and dance a while. This activates dreaming, enthusing, speaking, and taking steps and resonates everything into one inter-flowing whole.

Imagine yourself in your safe, spiritual non-ordinary middle worlds haven and departure nature-scape. Travel from there (through the conduit of your choice) to the lower realms and request assistance of a trusted spirit helper. The intention of this shamanic adventure is finding and experiencing and empowering in the spiritual world, the physical world we wish, hope, and desire to leave future generations of earth children.

Be guided and challenged by spirit and spirits to this potential new world as it exists as pure potential. Meet and get acquainted with at least one spirit being within it. Ask what to shift about yourself and your particular little bit of the present world to help bring the desired world into ordinary reality as soon as possible. Look for and receive a symbolic, potent gift to bring on the next stage of this excursion.

This symbolic gift spirit-power container might be given to you in a natural or abstract form - a rock or stick, perhaps, or a geometrical ornament. Receive this gift and thank all beings.

Then journey to the upper realms and request assistance around this intention from a trusted spirit helper there. Ask to see possibilities - an array of beings and events changing the world for the better, into the potential new world you dreamed in the lower worlds. Allow the spiritual energy-flows of these visions to sweep-away the power-gift you carried up.

Then, thank all beings, and accompanied by all of your helping spirits, return to your sacred departure place and sit in circle waiting - calm and relaxed. When your possibility-infused gift drops into the center of your circle, rejoice and give thanks and return to your ordinary-reality circle and rattle, drum, sing, and dance yourself back to everyday consciousness.

Jot down details and make a list of self-changes and steps to begin living your new world. Sleep on this shamanic journey overnight - no need to remember any night-dreams about it (but OK if you do). This is a way to plant the dream-seeds of potential, possibility, and power you brought back in your spirit-gift. Another way to activate your gift is creative and/or expressive art-play.

Then begin making these envisioned self and local changes, one by one, day by day.

Shamanic imagining is another way of getting REAL

2009-08-14T09:18:00.008-05:00

Image by woodleywonderworks via Flickr

Are shamanic ways imaginary? When I emphasize imagination in shamanic practice it might seem as if I am debunking shamanizing. Well, one person's debunking can be another person's enthusing.

I used to suppose I could categorize my shamanic shifting alongside the traditionalists, new-agers, esoterists, occultists, complementary and alternative medicine practitioners, and shamanistic or earth spirituality and religion participants. These are the directory categories where websites associated with me are still listed, because while I was signing up there seemed no other fitting category for my interpretation of contemporary shamanism.

As healing and transformational as (most of) these other types of practices can be, not much of any of what is listed in the paragraph above is what I am doing and intending now. Less and less of it relates or even resonates with my current shamanic practices.

I am not about to (futilely attempt to) redo directory listings around the web. Link directories are almost obsolete now anyway, and my old links will probably be way at the bottom of a way-back page by now.

I stopped signing up for new online directory listings anywhere a while ago. Nowadays I am making sure my webpages reflect clearly what I do and don't do, even while my understandings continue to shift, so whether folks find me through from an old listing or a social network profile they can read my newest view. (Ceremonial officiating and ministerial services listings are easier because my ministering is, and is likely to stay, very earth-religion - and almost any-religion - friendly.)

For me shamanic ways are 96% Art - Performance Art - in synergy with many expressive and creative arts. Shamanic ways can also be a combination of prayer, meditation, and healthy living but for me those are beneficial side-effects.

I tell anyone who asks these days that shamanizing is mostly (non-ordinary) dreaming and imagining flowing into purposeful (ordinary yet extraordinary) resonant embodying: dramatically expressing one's inner shaman-artist's faithful, hopeful visions and CHOICES of new, better life on earth, from the inside-out, with one's heaven-on-earthly self as the message-incarnate, though individual, singular, original multi-media costumed story, song, and dance performing. The shaman uses show and even sham on purpose, and the people know this, and go with the fun-flow on purpose, too.

This is how I shamanize and teach. I do acknowledge and respect many other understandings, interpretations, and practices of the 'way of the shaman' - even as I part company with most. And, as I have written often, just because I am calling shamanic ways imaginary and artistic does not mean I am saying they aren't real. Imaginary and pretend are powerfully real and wondrously reality-shifting when play (or the play) is on purpose, in my experience.

What about the other 6%? Well, for today, for the fun of it, I'll say that the rest is mostly Science(s) with a dash of the universe's own mysterious, trade-secret blend of ordinary (scientific) and non-ordinary (mythic) whole-greater-than-the-sum-of-its-parts CHAOS!

Topic change: Please visit some of my Squidoo lenses, where I am continuing my self-education, selling some stuff, honoring favorite places, and more! Many of them are new, opened so I could keep adding on, and all are undergoing continuing polishing.

My online retired blogging companions shapeshifted!

2009-08-04T12:35:00.018-05:00

Image via Wikipedia

Wow, big shapeshifts have happened recently! I have been doing my best to let go, live the fun, and keep on my shamanic way, shapeshifting along, adjusting to these drastic yet not unexpected changes.

Soon I will be removing the links to my (former) blogging companions' blogs (and listserves), allowing those sites to rest in peace but remain on the web as archives and memorials as long as the servers allow. I embrace the internet and they - named on the net Rezzee, Crabbee, Alan, Sharon, Tom, and L.C. (son of Teal and Chammy) and Sharandet (L.C.'s wife now) - tried blogging and social networking and cyber-shamanizing, then variously realized they didn't like it after the novelty wore off.

Now they have shapeshifted their shamanic circle offline into a new kind of cloistered yet close-together scattered site spiritual intentional community, that exists, nameless and unnoticed and un-sectarian at the edges (shamanic fringes?) of an ordinary reality community, somewhere not so far from here. I have agreed not to tell those spacetime coordinates.

This move rattled and drummed around then sang and danced to life out of an enduring dream shared around our circle for quite a while. But, even though I have kept daily and seasonal prayer cycles for years, I know the cloistered life is not for me (yet, anyhow).

Via snail mail I send lists of intentions for shamanizing. I receive reports about once a month (and ongoing support). We shamanic-dream as a circle often, still.

The other big shapeshift: Elders Teal and Chammy both shapeshifted from earth life into universal LIFE earlier this summer by dying of 'natural causes' a few weeks apart, both well over 90 years old, healthy for almost all of their days. For the last few years we have not been able to visit in person very often but I do still miss their earthy presences!

These two wonderful shapeshifts are interconnected directly, which is why so many changes have happened almost at once. I was stunned and grief-stricken by so many life-shifts in such a short period even while I was ecstatic, even though I consider it all GOOD NEWS.

I suppose this paradoxically ecstatic grieving is the main reason why my blogging all but stopped - and so soon after I had gotten off into an enthused, fresh, energized 'starting over' much earlier in the year. I am ready to get back to it now, though.

Shamanic Journey For My Mouse Neighbors

2009-07-26T10:59:00.004-05:00

Image by Bob & Jane via Flickr

I had been wondering when an exterminator would arrive to kill rodents in the building. It happened last week.

Psychotherapists and psychiatrists with offices here were reporting unscheduled mouse consultations, happening in broad daylight. Tortoise Cat was playing nightly with one catfood-craving mouse buddy. The other mice were staying away from our space, probably because Tortoise Cat is a skilled, clever hunter.

I assured the exterminator that Tortoise Cat had our territory covered, then shamanic journeyed to do what beneficial reality-shifting I could. I met up with Chameleon in the non-ordinary lower-realm forest where we usually confer then we headed back up to this middle-world and descended into this office building's basement.

Mouse soon joined us there for a chat. Mouse thanked me for my concern, but amazed me with the news that the mice know how to use the exterminator's poisoned traps as an opportunity to shapeshift directly through the middle-world! So everything is going according to DREAM.

Furthermore, some of the mice, including the Tortoise Cat's play buddy, had simply crept stealthily to another nearby safer location. Mouse instructed me that this longstanding cycle helps shuffle habits, keeps complacency away, re-balances (and strengthens) the urban mouse populations, and restores a pinch of re-creative quirky chaos to life for them and for all.

Tortoise Cat might miss her play sessions with Mousy but she seems to understand the wisdom of these ways.

Fortune Cookie Shamanic Journey

2009-07-20T13:59:00.005-05:00

Image via Wikipedia

Now and then I shamanic-journey the middle world with fortune cookies! I never take this spiritual quest the same way twice.

As with all shamanic navigation I never go without a genuine, heartfelt intention after consecrating sacred space-time around me. Next, I open a box of fortune cookies and select one for each sacred direction and lay them out before me. I usually include 8 compass points plus the center, but more or fewer travel directions can be used, as you are guided by Spirit and Spirits.

For me the directions are verbs, sets of inner alchemical processes with many associations. So I plan this shamanic journey's itinerary to resonate with the intention I am seeking assistance with.

If my quest intention has more to do with health, vitality, finances, luck, skill, or other practical matters I begin by seeking out a familiar shamanic helper from the lower-worlds. If my intention has more to do with wisdom, knowledge, or understanding I begin by seeking an upper-worlds shamanic guide. Often I enlist the protection and guidance from both the lower-worlds and upper-worlds.

Then I allow myself to be guided around the directions of the middle-world, seeking a non-ordinary fortune cookie in each. The non-ordinary fortune cookies I find are usually made of an alloy of sacred metals and are usually decorated with a symbol which I do my best to study and remember before adding each cookie to my bag or pocket or crystal and continuing along the way.

The shamanic middle-world(s) can be confounding but with help and guidance from Spirit and Spirits and this relatively simple task of collecting a non-ordinary fortune cookie for each sacred direction I have decided to visit I almost always stay on track. Between directions obstacles loom, however.

It has happened that I have had to make more than one shamanic journey. This shamanic journey can be completed in any number of sessions - such as one session for each direction if this proves necessary.

After I have visited all the directions where I have placed a fortune cookie I return to ordinary-reality and jot down the story of the shamanic journey before I forget it, especially the symbols (if any) on the non-ordinary fortune cookies and/or any shapeshifting I observed or other changes in the cookies or messages I received, all according to what I experienced. These details are all parts of the 'answer' and assistance from Spirit and Spirits for this shamanic journey's intention.

Then I eat the cookies for each direction in the same order as I traveled through non-ordinary reality to gather them. I lay out the ordinary reality fortunes before me and sing them in a song and create and dance a dance to go with it.

You may create a picture or other artifact, instead of or in addition to the song and dance, around an overall theme suggested by the non-ordinary and ordinary fortune cookies. This is to give thanks and to ground and activate the spiritual shifts of this shamanic journey into life in this world.

Shamanic Shifting Fireworks

2009-07-08T15:13:00.000-05:00

Image by milesizz via Flickr

Fire-works, over water, bursting in air, bouncing off bluffs and buildings:

Several thrilling fireworks displays energized Milwaukee's east side lakeshore lands around me. I listened from the back porch, taking breaks from my office transformation project.

The deep, resonant, shocking vibrations, lights, and colors reflected and reverberated all around and within. It felt like I was getting an extreme healing, cleansing, radical elemental night spa treatment.

So at the Friday, July 3 circle, I shamanic journeyed for more of my own inside-out life-shifting, purposeful, beautiful, spiritual explosions. This is a shamanic journey I will take periodically.

In everyday reality fireworks are dangerous fun. For many fireworks are frightening and disturbing, even panic-attack triggering un-fun, or unwelcome reminders of warfare, destruction, and death. Folks are injured and even killed every year 'playing' with firecrackers, bottle rockets, and the like. Even expert pyro-technicians lose limbs or lives setting up, practicing or putting on the public displays.

So a shamanic journey for fireworks isn't for everyone! On this adventure my internal fireworks were predominantly green and red and appeared to be arising from a barge that was sailing towards me over the calmest waters I have ever seen. After I returned to ordinary-reality I drew a picture and improvised a dance to activate and remember the energy-shifts that I know happened and are happening still.

Shamanic ways for solving everyday troubles & widening wellness

2009-06-23T07:51:00.012-05:00

Image via Wikipedia

I am a neighborhood and universal modern shaman (with a small 's') who stands aside from a lot of things. I do my best to stay centered on my purpose - helping anyone I can - and usually I steer clear of, and journey WAY around, a lot of energy draining controversy.

Staying centered, while sanding aside, while steering around - yet pausing at breathtaking edges now and then - gets easier and funner now that I have developed the knack into a shamanic dance-habit. Of course, writing about it breaks this healthy habit, briefly.

I practice shamanic ways and hypnotic ways for self-change aside from any and all western medical (also called allopathic) diagnoses and interventions - and aside from most New Age and other kinds or schools of complements or alternatives as well. I chose - years ago - to work under my ministerial and consulting hypnotist credentials rather than my (still valid, for the record) Wisconsin licensed clinical social worker credential. And I shrink away from, without opposing or attempting to debunk (though I have my doubts), much of what is often called complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) as well.

Because: Given any being or situation calling for help and change, I have found, over many years of practice, that when motivation, attitude, healthy lifestyle choices, and everyday troubleshooting are shamanized and/or addressed through hypnosis and related techniques such as self-hypnosis, guided imagery, relaxation, storytelling, and more, MAJOR life-shifts for the better happen, all without and beyond pathologizing what comes before me under any type of terminology.

This 'everyday help for ordinary problems' approach can complement most, if not all, standard, government-licensed medical or mental-health, but is not offered as a replacement for any of it. And this simplifying, ordinary-reality centered approach can complement most complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) as well. But as intentions go, complementing is near the bottom of my top 10.

I do not offer shamanic or hypnotic ways as complements or alternatives to anything. The methods I practice work best to change ordinary rather than pathological trouble patterns. Still, I hear back that beginning and ending with activating and enhancing wellness brings remarkable, lasting relief and renewal.

Shamanic session = I facilitate YOUR shamanic journey!

2009-06-09T09:17:00.007-05:00

Image by Shamanic Shift via Flickr

As a neighborhood and universal shaman I can shamanic-journey on behalf of others, but my aim and emphasis is teaching and facilitating interior voyages for the knowledge and power to self- and reality-shift on purpose. Shamanic Shift Center is designed and kept as a portal for connecting to Spirit, and many find it to be a trance activating place. 'Hanging out' here for a while of interacting with the rocks, crystals, essential oils, art-play materials, books, percussion instruments, divination and meditation cards, theme shrines, and more, can be waking, awakening shamanic experience by itself.

Within this portal environment, I can share many older and newer ways and means to psychonavigate within, towards powerful new dreams and patterns, so you can bring back your own re-creative stories and energy-flows of change for the better. Besides drumming, chanting, dance, storytelling, and other adapted, universal shamanic ways, I facilitate soul travel with modern methods of consciousness-shifting, such as self-hypnosis and guided imagery.

There are as many ways to shamanic journey as there are spiritual adventurers. As with all prayer and meditation treatments, all the spiritual healing and transforming is accomplished by Spirit and Spirits, as each journeyer understands those words and concepts. When you engage in a shamanic session YOU become a shamanic shift center and living portal for inward spiritual change to grow into outward, everyday changes.

More ways of a neighborhood shaman

2009-05-30T09:45:00.009-05:00

Image by matt.searles via Flickr

I am listing several characteristics of a neighborhood shamanic practice to better understand my own ruminations around this topic:

Tendencies (not hard-fast rules) of a Neighborhood Shaman...

-- Individualizes a healing intervention for each being, place, or situation at hand; does not go by a recipe book (even if familiar with several)

-- Re-directs the current energy-flows and patterns into a one-of-a-kind shamanic shifting process instead of attempting to fit symptoms or signs into theories or formulas

-- Shamanizes indirectly (yet cleverly) catalyzing and facilitating purposeful change through arts and entertainment with symbolic, mulit-level songs, dances, and stories and little or no direct advising or suggesting

-- Draws from the natural and social support present in ordinary reality on the block or around the corner rather than seeking the exotic or weird or faraway as remedies (through nothing is off-limits)

-- Draws and adapts from (but takes care not confuse) diverse fields of knowledge and practice whenever and however it serves the present purpose, without adopting set-in-stone canons of dogma, or belief systems, or paradigms

-- Views problems and challenges first as the natural consequences of changeable behaviors and longstanding habits (on many interconnecting levels physical to spiritual) rather than deep-seated pathologies or fatal flaws

-- Focuses most upon changing what can be changed here and now and going forward rather than untangling past complexities (because a "change the things I can" and leave the rest for a while approach deepens awareness steadily and brings unconscious content to consciousness as needed and allows A LOT to be untangled and rewoven by Spirit and Spirits anyway, in harmony with the healing intention at hand)

-- Seeks and works to activate and enhance healing and transforming solutions already present within the presenting being, place, or situation

-- Develops her own techniques and methods

-- Works locally on behalf of the Earth and whole universe; most concerned with transforming this world for the better rather than transcending ordinary reality; shamanic shifts now by now, here by here, case by case, radiating healing outward through all space and time from this self and this neighborhood

-- Opens and keeps open a neighborhood center and circle as a conducive environment for all-of-the-above to happen on a small scale, day by day

Other approaches to shamanic ways may overlap or blend with this and one another: Traditional (seeking a direct link to indigenous spirituality or religion), New Age (merging with a blend of magical, mystical, metaphysical, and 'complementary and alternative' transforming and healing systems), Mainstreaming (aiming for recognition or licensing within the western medical model), and Large Group Awareness Training (the workshop and 'intensive' circuit).

Shamanic ways can bypass patterns and authorities!

2009-05-22T08:59:00.010-05:00

Image by Todd Mecklem via Flickr

Let LIFE keep liberating Life! Let there be NO resting place for humankind. Let us adventure beyond all limits, boundaries, and edges of space-time.

Along with soul (or self) consciousness and language humans have evolved the need and the knack for seeking and finding patterns, meanings, bigger pictures...and higher authorities behind the patterns. We revere diverse celebrities and obey an array governors in ordinary reality. But our absolute favorite higher authorities are idols, figments, or supernatural (impossible) beings who float forever, ineffable, above nature and everyday life, who intervene capriciously or judiciously, seldom or daily, in our worlds, and continue to trouble us and our families, clans, bands, tribes, communities, and nations in all our affairs through their called and chosen (and so-called chosen) ministers.

What frees us as a species seems to capture us again at every turn on the spiral path of life. The natural spiral of 'life freeing life' seems to slow to a torturous grind as ages pass. Some speculate or argue that evolution of sentient beings always leads to extinction or doomsday but I dream otherwise.

I live and teach shamanic ways as my best response, so far, to a persisting, perplexing, irrational, irresistible inner (inborn?) calling to 'minister' (in Mystery, Spirit, or Whatever...?) because the ways of shamans offer the most life-shifting, soul-freeing, world re-creating POWER with the least built-in necessity to bow down to authorities, lesser or greater, or to follow traditional patterns, organized or unorganized. Paradoxically, religions offer a branching Tree Of Life of interior ways of relating to and changing reality on purpose to balance outer ways such as the sciences, yet the ways of religions eventually turn these soul connections into comfortable niches where further growth is slowed and stunted, or even nip the buds of new spiritual growth into dead ends.

Here I am the founder of a church (by the IRS definition) or 'religious institution' (by my insurance agent's definition) or center and circle (as I say) of shamanic ways who does not want to offer religion at all, who aims to catalyze religion-free zones and stir up small circles of churchless spirituality. No, I do not even want to offer 'spirituality' because this softer sounding word is being used more and more to refer to personal or unorganized or new (or 'new old') religions or belief systems or other patterns of Complementary and Alternative healing or transforming that are currently, quickly, and relentlessly being chiseled into stone anyway.

Update: I came back and linked the Scientific American article. I had not read it before writing the above post. I found it several hours later.

What I am attempting to express here is that I experience and I understand that many or most humans experience soul-icity and spirit-icity permeating the realms, directions, dimensions, levels, and orders of reality, however each individual describes ALL THAT IS. Other kinds who exist need not be related to as more than just that - others, or friends or companions, hopefully. One can live Earth sustaining ways and reconnect to Nature without ascribing anything to supernatural agents or forces.

Objectivist Ayn Rand wrote many words about the soul. I remember watching an interview where she repeated the word soul so often it shocked the (atheist) objectivist friend of mine who was showing me the video.

But I know this enchantment wells up from within to be encountered and comprehended through dreaming, imagination, and art - and played with. I opine mystical and magical experience is a key component of human nature so it must be natural, a specific expression within humankind of some universal quality, more aspects of which will eventually come to light and be described scientifically, as humankind continues this life adventure.

I find that doing this play on purpose as prayer treatment through shamanic ways does shift reality for the better (slowly or rapidly, through tiny to huge, physical and psychological, and ordinary or extraordinary means) without any need for the 'supernatural' or the set in stone patterns, systems, and traditions of religion. Playng and pretending are powerful.

I keep a simple, flexible cycle of shamanizing periods and allow my internal non-ordinary reality 'map' of archetypes, symbols, and processes to shift as I journey on, so I can keep most of the FUN of magic, mysticism, and alchemy without much of the seriousness. Weird as it may seem, this way of practicing shamanic ways has not diminished but increased my friendly respect for all kinds of life and reality.

Yet so many folks seem to want - or insist upon - elaborate trappings, traditional patterns, and exterior agents or sources of authority. Well, we shall see what happens as the ages roll on...!

Universal neighborhood shamanism is my open-ended mission

2009-05-13T09:18:00.007-05:00

Image by Dru! via Flickr

Where is this shamanic life journey leading? A shaman opens and keeps open connections between the ordinary and non-ordinary aspects of all that is for the purpose of catalyzing life-shifts for the better. That is what I am aiming to be and do.

A shamanic understanding paradoxically encompasses and creatively combines, yet does not confound or confuse, diverse views and ways of experiencing reality - scientific, artistic, philosophical, and religious (and all the branches and subcategories thereof). I am called to practice shamanic ways as the most open, flexible, freeing spirituality and life-way possible.

A 'neighborhood shaman' lives a mission to embody this bridging of the outward, measurable material and the inward, intangible spiritual worlds as an individual center of ongoing shamanic shifting, of self and reality at once, on behalf of a particular local environment. For me, this is best done on a small scale, one to one, shift by shift.

A neighborhood shaman is also a 'universal shaman' who dreams up then radiates, flows, breathes, and acts out local changes to shift the whole universe, eventually, from the inside-out. A universal shaman is free to adapt to the present situation at hand for healing any transformation method, ancient to contemporary as well as invent new ones. This approach is the opposite of any sort of traditionalism or dogma or codified belief system.

I started living full-time, on purpose, as a neighborhood universal shaman over 20 years ago. I see more and more practitioners and organizations in the worldwide revival of shamanic ways developing and mixing and matching various characteristics of Large Group Awareness Trainings (LGATs) and related methods such as NLP, New Age or Wiccan or indigenous peoples' religions, esoterism and the occult, Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CAMs), and mass (or 'viral') marketing, all of which is OK by me.

But I am moving away from all of this, as I am pushed by Spirit and Spirits, towards "I don't know what to call it yet or ever!" except universal and neighborhood shamanism. So I am attempting to write an eBook about this when I can barely blog about it, LOL!