Circling behind the scenes, schemes, seams & screams of ordinary life

Snow-hidden lines...?

Update...

This ministry today: I receive emails through the contact form requesting shamanizing or counseling over challenges and troubles. Then, I pass the reality-shift requests to several shamanic companions who journey or dream or meditate (or whatever they are inner-guided to do, each their own ways, as we activate our widespread, ongoing circle).

Then usually, care-fully, often taking a while at it, I email the best answers and suggestions I can gather as an advisory consultation, disclaiming (informally through vocabulary and phrasing) that the reply is my opinion only, probably in disagreement with many other practitioners' and cannot take the place of appropriate licensed professionals' interventions and one's own wiser inner-guidance. (The disclaimers posted in the footers of the church's websites that apply to all interactions state it boringly, formally.) Of course, I realize I cannot know if the questioner has inquired in earnest, or for a college project or as a prank.

Because I and this circle live by modern, ever-emerging understandings of shamanic ways and original, innovative, ever-adapting practices, our approach(es) seem atheistic and out of sync with other contemporary practitioners' responses, I'm told often enough. None of our circle--those known to one another, so far, I mean--really fits into organized atheism or lives as any defined type of atheist or even universist or even hylozoist.

Longstanding favorite mottoes among us are: "Don't believe, be LIVE!" and "Wonder on, for wonders never cease."

Anyway, avoiding excessive defining, allowing mystery, entertaining chaos, seeking paradox and keeping fun variously, we aim to shift self and ALL for the better behind the "seems" of everyday Earth, too.

Internet connecting--still present, but: For a long while, my and the church-circle's social media feeds have posted mostly links and occasional quotes, always connected to shamanism somehow, in my view, but often barely tangentially (and way down deep between the deeper lines that span between even deeper lines). Only rarely do I add cryptic commenting. Often, for me, science discoveries, technological innovations and odd news point to shamanic themes or induce consciousness-shifting wonder.

"Question and quest on" is an overall theme. The social networking "holding pattern" began in cringing reaction to a trend I continue to struggle to find clever terms for, and haltingly (temporarily) call: "the deadpanly pandemic" or the "irony-deficient (chronic over-reacting) dis-ease" (but whatever it is, it's continuing to go viral Net-wide).

So the social accounts went on retreat a while ago, then continued to clam-up on purpose, to avoid providing even scraps of more sustenance for hateful thoughts and raging emotions. This stance may change during 2014, I dream. Perhaps soon (or later) I'll resume personal posts. Our quietly courageous helper clam may be joined, for more boisterous fun, by...a louder fearless ally, still shrouded in snow, ice and mystery today.

New Year calling: 'Don't believe -- be live, shift free!'

Pine Tree Pals (Photo credit: Shamanic Shift)

When I receive calls requesting shamanic shifting, first and last I do my best to transform limiting beliefs into better, funner life stories to sing and dance onward (but never to set in stone). Often I shamanize by dreaming, visioning and acting out a belief-free world and universe, simply because I've found this practice is the most effective way for me to activate and reactivate joy.

My views are foolish on purpose, even foolhardy I begin to fear, given the rising "haterade" levels I and others have noticed being sloshed and quaffed around the Net over cherished beliefs. But for me belief-debunking reduces deadly seriousness and restores healing fun, and hopefully, by waves of possibility branching out, eventually this practice cheers and frees others too.

I opine, based upon years of experiencing incremental to drastic improvements through day by day fun-restoring shifts: Alongside laughter, fun is a most powerful natural healing, re-creating force in this multiverse.

Also: While I practice adaptive shamanic innovations, I do my best to live what I term scientific optimism.

Spirituality and science share an evergreen companionship along my earth-adventuring path. Embracing the paradoxes I encounter under these non-identical twin trees opens my understanding deeper and deeper, leaving mystery sacred. I accept technologies emerging from scientific experimenting as a facet of this world's (and universe's) ever-evolving wild nature and accept human nature as a wilderness to adventure.  

But, I've witnessed over my years so far, how the results are unfortunate when humans seemingly compulsively mix-up inner spirituality and worldly religion (within established, organized formal institutions as well as in relatively recently instituted "alternative" movements and organizations). Many, if not all, of these confusing combinations prove deadly, I continue to note with dismay, becoming, all too often, (at worst and at best) traps that leave the best-intentioned folks unwittingly at the mercy of deluded authorities who order wars, instill pessimism and teach self-denigration.

As a tendency or habit, religious "un-questioning" promotes sickening seriousness and prevents reality-shifting shamanic asking and questing. In a series of shamanic acts this new year, I suggest being a heretic and choosing to ask any authority (or even to ask an uncomfortable status-quo situation you find yourself in, or ask any of the beings within those circumstances) "What's ailing here?" -- then dare to take up the calling to shamanic journey further for new answers, then quest farther and wider under the sun, moon, planets and elements in ordinary reality for new remedies!

I speculate: If spirituality is as essential to human nature as some scientists hint without knowing the complex details, the longstanding pitfall of submitting to deified authorities (visible and invisible) might be a root cause of peoples' apparent proneness to serious, self-limiting, unquestioning religious believing and acting. I see examples of spirituality lapsing into religion causing gushing losses of vital knowledge and healing power everyday. Perhaps these tendencies and susceptibilities were complexly genetically coded into humankind during ancient stages of prehistoric evolution when such behaviors could have helped increase chances of community survival, by adding checks and balances to our species' emerging intelligence, cunning and ruthlessness.

In this new age and new year, shamanic ways could drag us deeper into deadly dogmas that many many centuries ago began to decrease survival chances, but I dream and hope shamanic innovations will shift us free.

I suppose: If indeed we are living in an anthropocene geological epoch, this all the more means we can change ourselves and our world for the better on purpose.