Month: July 2016

Jerome Roos / ROAR Magazine presented three bullet points concerning the Paris Climate Accord:

1) NO ACTIONS, JUST WORDS

2) THE NUMBERS DON’T ADD UP

3) CORPORATE POWER REMAINS UNCHECKED

Slowing and reversing the effects of climate change has as much of a chance of success as a “snowball in hell.” Keep in mind hell is not a realm after we pass-over (die) but may be experienced right here while we are on earth. At the present time, the capitalistic and dualistic mindset is too ingrained. Only an awakening to a shift in worldview and thinking will have the possibility of reversing the destruction being done to and on the earth.

“We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.” Albert Einstein

The following is excerpted from Return of a Green Philosophy: The Wisdom of Óðinn, the Power of Þórr, and Freyja’s Power of Nature 

Body and Soul

To the Norse-Germanic mind, body and soul were not dualistic concepts but were united as one. If you hugged a tree, you were not only holding its body, but you were also embracing its essence—its soul:

“All peoples recognize a body and a soul, or rather a material and a spiritual side to everything that exists. The bird has a body which is lifted in the air, and it has a soul which enables it to fly, as well as to strike with its beak. So also the stone is a body, but in this body there is a soul that wills and enables the stone to do harm, to bite and strike and crush; a soul which gives it its hardness, its rolling movement, its power of prophesying the weather or showing the way…

“To find the soul, wherever we grasp, be it stone or beast or tree, we lay hold of it. It comes toward us conscious of itself, as a thing that knows and wills, acts and suffers—in other words, as a personality.”[i]

Everything has a soul/spirit within its outward form. In other words, spirit and matter interpenetrate where everything has a divine spark and consciousness within it. Everything is alive and conscious. This knowledge motivated the Norse to become partners with their surroundings—to win friendship with the souls/powers of the animals, trees, and stones, and to establish an inner relationship with them. Their life was not only connected with the powers of the earth but to the unseen powers of the cosmos and earth—the totality of Yggdrasill.

This weaving of life together created a web of frith (“peace” – “calm”). According to Vilhelm Grönbech, “The key-note of ancient culture is not conflict, neither is it mastery, but conciliation and friendship. Man strives to make peace with the animals, the trees, and the powers that be, or deeper still, he wants to draw them into himself and make them kin of his kin, till he is unable to draw a fast line between his own life and that of the surrounding nature.”[ii]

Nature—Heart and Nature as One 

Go to the mountains, sit by a tree, and listen with heart and mind; walk in the valleys with the winds caressing your soul, and listen with heart and mind; lie by a river with its soothing lullaby, and listen with heart and mind; skip a stone in childlike innocence across the mirror surface of a lake, and listen with heart and mind; feel the fire of the sun on your face, and listen with heart and mind; let the moonlight blanket you with its beauty, and listen with heart and mind; stand and gaze at the night sky with its star-studded tapestry, and listen with heart and mind to the sound of angels; and let the rain cleanse you of pain and suffering, and listen with heart and mind. Rev. Dr. JC Husfelt

Have you ever taken the time to go out into nature, away from human encroachment, and just sat on the earth and felt the beauty and love surrounding you? Have you taken the time to see elf and dwarf peer forth from field and stone? Have you ever considered that you have no other reason than to just be part of and in partnership with nature; no smart phones or tablets, no hiking from point to point, but just you, and the Great Mother—Freyja, seeing, feeling, hearing, smelling, and even tasting the essence of the kingdom of nature?

Earth is a paradise of wonders all wrapped up in myriad colors. It is alive with a consciousness that responds to all the things that call it home. I believe in a partnership with the earth and feel at one with it. I do not believe in being superior to nature, acting as its steward, but instead acting as one with nature and in partnership with the earth in co-creating a paradisiacal state of life for all life.

When was the last time you viewed the miracle of sunrise; the wonder of sunset; the magical rise of the moon in its fullness, reminding you of the interpenetration of light within dark? Have you ever been in awe of the darkness of a new moon, knowing that all growth is born out of darkness? When are you going to awaken to the paradise spread before you—the kingdom of Óðinn as Allfather?

When I talk about Mother Nature, I’m referring not only to the earth but also to the whole of the seen and unseen universe. Mother Nature is wondrous, magical, and a miracle of creation. The universe as Mother Nature is a great concept to embrace. It expands our concern and consciousness for the well-being of all things out to the stars. This takes the religious philosophical concept of the kingdom of Ódhinn from just being earthbound out to the stars—the totality of the universe!

Having our heart and nature as one essence is essential for our well-being of body, mind, and spirit. Our heart will assist us in connecting with nature, and nature will help us be connected to our heart—a blending of both. We may metaphorically consider Yggdrasill the heart of the earth and the heart of heaven, pumping the lifeblood of creation through all things of existence.

The following is excerpted from Do You Like Jesus—Not the Church? Jesus: His True Message Not the Lie of Christianity.

Mother Nature—Earth 

The Holy Grail is not an item to possess. It is not an external thing. It is our awakened hearts and minds, and in a grand sense, it symbolizes what has been lost—humanity’s, and our own, lost values. The primary one is the loss of the feminine—nature and the equality of men and women. This is the lost feminine principle. This world of ours only recognizes as authentic the light, not the dark; the material, not the spiritual; the male principle, not the feminine. This is then the quest—the quest to recover the feminine and nature. And to heal the wound—the separation, suppression, abuse, and control of the feminine. One of the greatest profiteers, activists, and advocates of this wound, the superior masculine paradigm, is the church.[iii]

Earth is a paradise of wonders all wrapped up in colors of blue and green. It is alive with a consciousness that responds to all the things that call it home. Jesus believed in a partnership with the earth and felt at one with it. He did not believe in being superior to nature, acting as its steward, but as being one with nature and in partnership with the earth in co-creating a paradisiacal state of life, for all life—this is the kingdom of God.

His connection to nature as a key to the kingdom was reflected in many of his teachings. “Like the sages of the Old Testament, Jesus often pointed to nature as a source of insight. ‘Consider the lilies of the field; neither toil nor spin.’ The observation could take the form of a question: ‘Are grapes gathered from thorn bushes, or figs from thistles?’ The appeal to the intelligence is clear: ‘Of course not,’ is the obvious answer. The similar saying, ‘A good tree bears good fruit,’ makes an equally commonsense observation. As with most of the proverbs of Jesus, it is the application of these lessons from nature that their particular power lies.

“Common to all these forms of traditional wisdom as used by Jesus was an invitation to see differently. He appealed to the imagination and intelligence, and not to the authority of a revealed tradition, as did the teachers of conventional wisdom. Indeed, Jesus used the forms of traditional wisdom to challenge conventional wisdom.”[iv]

Contrary to Jesus’s belief and life, the entrenched mind-set of our culture is one of superiority to nature—being a steward. This mind-set reflects the patriarchal view of nature or the feminine as below them or inferior to them. Supposedly, men know what is best in managing nature or the feminine (women). By its definition, stewardship implies inequality, with the male side of duality being superior to the female, or Mother Nature, side. To put it in perspective, I am not a steward of my wife but her partner. Life is not about stewardship but about partnership. Stewardship is separation, while partnership is unity. My wife and I are not separate from each other but are together in unity as we journey through life.

This philosophy of patriarchal stewardship results in a separation mentality from the essential paradise God has provided, and so far still provides, to humanity: food, shelter, and beauty. Why then do so many go along with this separation paradigm? How blind can the majority be when “it is as true today as it was in those ancient times, dimly recalled by legend, that Nature can bestow upon human beings great wisdom and knowledge”?[v]

As a society and culture, our separation from nature underlies many of the problems and ills we face today, from climate change to the worldwide abuse and second-class citizenship of women. Being separate from nature, the keys to the kingdom remain hidden, buried beneath layers of church and institutional patriarchal rule.

But you can discover the keys to the kingdom. Discover nature as I did. As a child I remember lying in the grass while looking up at the immense sky; it was so majestic in its blue-tinged beauty. Then I fondly recall rolling over onto my stomach, smelling the earth and its life-force while gazing at the greenness of love the earth shares with all of her creatures.

I remember the magic of chasing lightning bugs in an attempt to capture their light for just a brief moment before letting them go on their way into the night. Even at a young age, I was ever seeking the light. I know I am not alone in these memories of happiness when our hearts, not our minds, beckoned us to be part of and connected to the earth. As children, from the depths of our hearts and souls, we recognized nature’s wisdom as a gift to be shared by all. Many of us saw and lived in a garden paradise that provided the adventures and magic of life that only nature can provide.

My parents, on the other hand, had seemed to lose sight of this simple truth, nature’s wisdom. Possibly, it was due to their excessive work habits in their effort to “provide for me.” It was my great-uncle Albert who fostered and nourished in me the uncomplicated facts of life and the beauty and wisdom of the fruits and flowers of creation. He would let me help him while he tended his Concord grape vines and nurtured his pride and joy, the bright flowers with the sword-shaped leaves—gladioluses. Picking a grape and holding it between his thumb and forefinger, he once spoke these wise words to me: “Jimmy, this is the perfect color of purple; if you pick the grape when it is a lighter color, it will rob the vine of its gift. And if it is a deeper, bluish purple, you will have dishonored the vine by letting the grape stay on too long.”

Life is simple and straightforward. We can discern others through the fruit of their vines. In today’s world much fruit is rotten, evidenced by the lies of the church, politicians and the excessive consumption and accumulation of wealth that rots the fruit of the spirit.

But now is the moment of power. In seasons past, if your fruit has spoiled on the vine or stayed on too long, do not despair. Begin now to tend and nurture your vine, and your fruit will become sweet, loving, and compassionate.

May Peace Be Upon You – Live Well and Die Well

[i] Vilhelm Grönbech, The Culture of the Teutons, 124.

[ii] Ibid., 141.

[iii] Excerpted from Tequila and Chocolate: A Guide to a New Consciousness—the Awakening of Our Divinity and Humanity, an unpublished manuscript by Rev. Dr. J. C. Husfelt.

[iv] Marcus J. Borg, Jesus: A New Vision, 98–99.

[v] Paul Broadhurst, Tintagel and the Arthurian Myths, 24.

Partially excerpted from Return of a Green Philosophy: The Wisdom of Óðinn, the Power of Þórr, and Freyja’s Power of Nature

Stewardship (Stewards of Nature) means, humans comes first; nature comes second. This is especially true when the underlying reason for logging miles of big trees is capitalistic greed. Billed as stewardship, what is best for the land, but in reality it is what is best for a few humans. This was very evident last year in Washington State. Due to the threatening Wolverine fire, the decision was made “to cut one of the largest firelines ever in Washington, logging 114 acres of critical spotted-owl habitat and felling big trees—including a giant that had stood for centuries, so large it was a one-log load on a semi truck.”[i] It is important to note that wood prices are sky-high due to the amount of new construction within Seattle and around other parts of the country.

In August of last year, the fire looked threatening when it was moving fast spreading as much as three miles a day. “But field notes, emails and documents released by the Forest Service under a Freedom of Information Act request by the Seattle Times show Forest Service employees working on the firebreak believed there was no emergency by the time logging began about two weeks later. Some tried to stop the cutting, but they were overruled.”[ii] Common sense tells us that a few were making tons of money off of this decision.

Let’s call a spade, a spade; stewardship is nothing more than a patriarchal paradigm of domination—domination over the feminine: Mother Nature.

We live in a patriarchal world. The entrenched mind-set of our culture is one of superiority to nature, of being a steward. This mind-set reflects the patriarchal view of nature, the feminine, as below or inferior to man. Accordingly, men know what is best in managing nature—the feminine. By its definition, stewardship implies inequality, with the male side of the duality being superior to the female/Mother Nature side. To put it in perspective, I am not a steward of my wife but her partner. Life is not about stewardship but about partnership. Stewardship is separation, while partnership is unity. My wife and I are not separate from each other but are together in unity as we journey through life.

As a society and culture, our separation from nature underlies many of the problems that we face today, from climate change to the worldwide abuse and second-class citizenship of women. There are multitudes of examples of the male-dominated religions controlling (or is it dominating?) women’s bodies, through controlling their reproductive health and sexual activity. These range from the covering of the head and/or female body in Islam to birth control being a sin in the Catholic Church. These examples even extend to the founding and subsequent history of Iceland. The land of fire and ice was founded by the Norse in the ninth century, after the courageous Norse pagan purists left Norway to escape the Christian tide that was overwhelming pagan cultures and religions. In their new homeland, their freedom of body, mind, and spirit only survived about two hundred years until their Althing, the oldest surviving parliamentary institution in the world, declared Christianity the religion of Iceland. As a concession to the Norse pagans, their beliefs and practices were allowed to go underground. The point of this is that before the Church took over Iceland, men and women were equals in that society. The primary crime was blood feud. After the Church established its dysfunctional beliefs, women were regarded as inferior to men and the most frequent crime was incest. Men now owned all women’s bodies.

In these dysfunctional times, it is important to embrace a Green Philosophy—an egalitarian philosophy of humanity’s partnership with the seen and unseen things of the earth and nature

Be wild, be uncivilized, be an Earth Warrior, be a partner with nature and let Mother know that she is still loved by some humans. And revolt against the injustices being done each and every day, not only to the earth, but to women and children as well.

 

[i] Lynda V. Mapes, Collateral Damage, Seattle Times, July 24, 2016, A1.

[ii] Ibid.

Fiolþ ek fór, fiolþ ek feistađa, fiaulþ ek reynda regin (Greatly I journeyed, greatly I tried, greatly I probed the powers); hitt vil ek vita, vafđruþnis sala-kynni (which I want to know, entering the strength-weaving domains).[i]

Wandering to distant lands into the unknown is necessary for awakening and spiritual power. Wandering is not holiday or vacation. It is not travelling to a place just because it is the “in thing” to do such as Iceland.

Wandering puts us into partnership with nature and culture. Like a chameleon we become one with the land and its people. Experience is the result and the thread of knowledge in wandering. It is not about selfies or an arrogance of entitlement. Wandering as a stranger in a strange land beckons us to become one with the unknown—and love unites us.

For the greater part of my life I have been, and always will be, a wanderer and seeker. Like Óðinn, I have sought knowledge and the experience of that knowledge wherefore as a potential—wisdom. And sometimes the gift of that wisdom is a knowing—a knowing of the mysteries of heaven and earth. Such is the tale that follows:

The Icelandic Huldufólk (Hidden Ones)

Excerpted from: Return of a Green Philosophy: The Wisdom of Óðinn, the Power of Þórr, and Freyja’s Power of Nature.

After my firsthand physical experience with otherworldly energetic beings in 1997, I concluded that there would also be earthly energetic beings, commonly referred to as faeries and elves. This conclusion came from my experience, and many Otherworldly experiences from an intuitive sense, scholarly knowledge, and oral teachings from elders around the world. My family and I experienced items missing and later showing up after journeying to Cornwall, England, in the nineties, a trait of the Cornish faeries known as piskies. As with life, it might not have been the piskies playing tricks on us but our own human forgetfulness. But then…

I had journeyed to Iceland with my son and one of our students. For the first part of our journey, we were exploring the most magical region of Iceland, Snæfellsnes, a peninsula, and its volcano, Snæfellsjökull. Jules Verne used this volcano as the setting for his novel A Journey to the Centre of the Earth. This is a mystical and strange land, where the hidden ones, elves and dwarves, hide in dark crevices and caves while strange rock formations are ogres and trolls. This is the land of fire and ice. It is nature in all its glory, creative and destructive though it may be. The wind, the sea, and the hundreds of waterfalls vibrate a song of primal pureness seldom found on our beautiful but wounded earth.

It is important to follow a few spiritual protocols. These are not dogma and doctrine based but more rooted in common sense and respect for the spirit world. Asking the otherworld’s permission when conducting our spirit work is one protocol that we follow faithfully and teach to our students. When we travel to a new place or return to one, it is best to do prayers, an offering, which could be as simple as a piece of our hair, and ask permission to be there and do our work. I also ask for safety for myself and others while we are on our journey (no safety issues in over thirty years of leading people on adventures). Sometimes this rite is short and simple, and at other times more extensive and intense. There is no format to follow, just your heart. As soon as I set foot in this magical land, I felt a strong connection and kinship. For this reason, early the next morning, facing the cloud-covered volcano with the icy winds crashing into me, I did an extensive and complete rite of permission. At least I thought I did.

It is virgin land in the sense that the New Agers have not discovered it and few tourists spend any time there. It is not only unspoiled land, but it is home to many legends and myths and one of the most famous Icelandic Viking shamans, Bárður. This legendary shaman was born in northern Norway and his grandmother was a Sami who passed on her shamanic and magical knowledge to him. One of the sacred sites on the edge of the volcano is known as the Singing Cave. This is Bárður’s cave, where he would spend time conducting his shamanic practice.

Since it was October, a time of the year for few tourists, we were just about guaranteed to be the only ones visiting the various sacred sites on the peninsula. Late in the afternoon, on the second day, we spent time in the Singing Cave. As its name indicates, one of the most obvious and important practices to conduct here would be galdr—Norse magical chant/song. Once again, I needed to make myself known to the spirit world and ask permission to enter the cave and do our work. Once inside, I conducted a blessing, an honoring and opening ceremony. Then we proceeded with other practices including an old magical chant. The sound of our voices vibrated off the cave walls, and once more, Bárður’s cave was singing.

We spent another day and half on the peninsula before we returned to Reykjavik, the capital of Iceland. While in Reykjavik, we stayed at the Grand Hotel, which would be our residence for the final days of our journey. The Grand Hotel is beautiful. However, I did not choose it for its beauty but for the Grand Hotel’s honoring of Norse mythology. When you enter the hotel, you are greeted with a phenomenal piece of glass artwork portraying the creation of the world based on the “Völuspá.” Their front desk is decorated with small poems from the Poetic Edda’s “Hávamál,” which provides advice for living, proper conduct, and wisdom. Staying there captured the feeling and essence of the Norse who had settled there after leaving Norway.

My room was on the twelfth floor overlooking the ocean and the fog-covered Snæfellsnes. Even though the hotel’s focus was on mythology, it was your typical, ordinary hotel…or so I thought. The next day, we were leaving early to explore Thingvellir National Park, where Iceland’s parliament, Althing, was founded. Heeding the advice “early to bed, early to rise,” I turned in around ten o’clock. I had only been asleep a few minutes before the phone began ringing. After I answered it, a voice said, “I’m calling to make sure the four Russians we sent over arrived safely since we’re overbooked here.” I told them they’d reached a private room and not the front desk and promptly hung up to keep myself from totally waking up. A few more minutes passed, and the phone rang again.

This time, the voice spoke Icelandic until I explained I didn’t understand, and they finally said in English, “This is not the front desk?” Hanging up once again and crawling back to bed, I thought, What is going on?

The phone rang constantly until I wised up and unplugged it at two in the morning. The next morning after breakfast, I plugged the phone back in and once again the calls began, all wanting information from the front desk.

Realizing it was not a fluke, I informed the front desk about the strange occurrence. They apologized and said that they would look into it, stating that it had never happened before and was seemingly impossible.

After a full day of exploring Thingvellir, I checked in at the front desk before going back to my room. The problem had been fixed, but there was no explanation for how it had happened. There was no logical reason to explain it. Later that night, as I was pondering this mystery, it finally came to me—the hidden ones. I had forgotten to include them in my prayers. And they will let you know if they have been offended or slighted in some manner. I immediately did prayers and an offering to them. The result: the rest of our journey was uneventful.

Is this the end of my story? Not at all. It seems that one or more decided to hop a ride on our flight home and now reside with us on another peninsula—this one in Washington state, overlooking the only fjord in the western continental United States!

 

[i] Lars Magnar Enoksen, Galdrs of the Edda, 24-25.

What do you believe? And no bullshit; answer truthfully. In the 90’s, this question and the subsequence discussion resulted in us losing two students in our apprenticeship program.

My position was that it is a loving world not a fearful one. A few of our apprentices couldn’t wrap their heads around this concept that the world is love not fear. The discussion grew more heated as the day wore-on with a few not accepting the world as a loving place. I did understand their position as their past contained physical and sexual abuse. Their focus was on the beastly actions of humans that sow the seeds of fear thus resulting in a world of fear. But the world is not populated just by humans—a human centric view of reality.

The rest of the world, all of nature, operates from a state of love not fear. Love is unity; fear is separation. By a person seeing the world as fearful we get to the root of their dualistic consciousness of separation. The soul essence of a tree is love, the divine consciousness that is part and parcel of the lifeblood of the tree as well as all the other sentient things of this earth; an earth, which in its beauty and bounty, will nurture and provide for all.

Our civilized culture oozes so subtly fear in emphasizing humanities superiority and separation from nature. Fear is profit to the capitalistic paradigm—it powers the engine of war and keeps people’s focus on the future (unknown-fear), not the present or past where knowledge and power lies. Look to the past for the present.

Be uncivilized, be wild, and embrace the world as a loving place not a fearful one. Keeping in mind that all things have consciousness, a behavior to adopt is to talk either silently or out loud to things other than humans, such as trees, flowers, and animals. During this communication imagine that each of you have a divine spark within, and understand that any feelings of love, sadness, or even hate will be felt not only by you but also by them.

One of the keys to compassion and loving-kindness is the relationship of self to self and self to others. Within our conscious there is a way to blur the separation between subject (self) and object (others). It is a focus on repeating either silently or out loud the axiom “I am that I am” and substituting the object after “‘I am that”: “I am that [state object][i] I am!”

This requires consistent practice, just as in any exercise regime where it is more efficient and effective to walk for thirty minutes six or seven days a week, every week, than one hour only two times a week every so often. It would be best to focus on the “I am” a few times a day, every day. At some point your separation between subject and object will become less and less.[ii]

[i] Anything may be inserted, such as I am that star I am; I am that bird I am; I am that person I am; I am that blade of grass I am; I am that cat I am, and so forth.

[ii] Rev. Dr. JC Husfelt, Do You Like Jesus – Not the Church?, 203-204.

Divine Humanity is a spiritual and religious philosophy[i] based on radical nonduality or where spirit and matter mutually permeate—no separation between the seen and unseen worlds or between mind and body—all things have consciousness and are connected in a “web” of love.[ii] This philosophy is substantiated by the work of Physicist David Bohm (1917 – 1992) a colleague of Albert Einstein.

Additionally, my firsthand experience of the Otherworld has been of the type that William James documented in The Varieties of Religious Experience. In this classic study, he “finds the origin of belief in an ‘unseen’ world in the experience of ‘religious geniuses’ who experience firsthand the realities of which religion speaks, and carefully distinguishes this primal experience from what he calls ‘secondhand’ religion, the beliefs that people acquire through tradition.”

Superimplicate, Implicate and Explicate Orders of the Universe

Physicist David Bohm theorized a different view of the universe than the one that is commonly accepted by science. Briefly he theorized a model of wholeness that constituted reality, which consisted of two orders: the explicate order and the implicate order. The explicate order is the manifest realm of the physical universe in space and time. The other order, implicate, is the un-manifested unseen (hidden) universe that has an unknown number of layers. The primary universe is not the explicate order but the implicate order. Additionally, he conceived of a ‘deeper’ hidden un-manifest layer of the implicate order, which he named the superimplicate order—the eternal order. Bohm also utilized an approximately comparable term for the implicate order—the holomovement. This indicated that the implicate order was always in dynamic flux.

From his research and from his own intuitive side, Bohm concluded that the universe, seen and unseen, is an inseparable whole that is full of energy and contains an unknowable number of universes enfolded, intertwined and interpenetrated into each other.

Similar to Einstein, Bohm was not a narrow focused physicist as he extended his theories outwardly to the fields of philosophy and ontology. His “ontological ideas are well summarized in the introduction to a popular paper from his own hand:

“In my work in physics, which was originally aimed at understanding relativity and the quantum theory on a deeper basis common to both, I developed the notion on the enfolded or implicate order (Bohm, 1980b). The essential feature of this idea was that the whole of the universe is in some way enfolded in everything and that each thing is enfolded in the whole. From this it follows that in some ways, and to a certain degree, everything enfolds or implicates everything. The basic proposal is that this enfoldment relationship is not merely passive or superficial. Rather it is active and essential to what each is. It follows that each thing is internally related to the whole and therefore to everything else. The external relationships are then displayed in the unfolded or explicate order in which each thing is seen as separate and extended and related only externally to other things. The explicate order, which dominates everyday experience as well as classical physics, is however secondary in the sense that ultimately it flows out of the primary reality of the implicate order.

“Since the implicate order is basically dynamic in nature, I called it the holomovement. All things found in the unfolded explicate order emerge from the holomovement in which they are enfolded as potentialities, and ultimately they fall back into it. They endure only for some time, and while they last, their existence is sustained in a constant process of unfoldment and reenfoldment, that gives rise to the relatively stable and independent forms in which they appear in the explicate order (Bohm, 1986b, p. 2-3).”[iii]

Bohm and Consciousness

Today’s world is still based on Descartes’ philosophy of the separation of body and mind—dualism.[iv]  Bohm, however, felt that Descartes was off the mark and that reality was simply composed of one energy—Oneness not dualism. This would then indicate that mind and matter are united as one and are not separate entities as proposed by Descartes.

Bohm felt that this separation of mind and matter as well as humanity only recognizing the explicate order and its illusion of separateness, had resulted in people’s minds fragmenting into a reality of separateness that then dictated their thoughts, actions and behaviors:

“A major problem of the world today, according to Bohm, is that our minds as well as society have become overly explicate, so to speak, or fragmented, in Bohm’s terms. This happens when the order of our thoughts is projected onto reality, that is, when we think that the world actually has compartments and divisions that correspond to the concepts we use to grasp it. The remedy proposed against fragmentation is, to put it simply, getting in touch with the energy of the implicate order. This will dispel confusion and fragmentation, bring about clarity and help people realize their “true potential for participating harmoniously in universal creativity…” (Bohm, 1986d, pp. 207-208)

Bohm’s “ recommendations as to how to get out of fragmentation and restore wholeness may be thought of as general guidelines for human action. However, Bohm is extremely reluctant about calling fragmentation “bad” and wholeness “good,” since he considers precisely this kind of division of the world into opposing categories the essence of the fragmentary approach. Thinking in terms of good and evil only propagates the antagonisms and conflicts between people and within the individual.

Instead, he prefers to speak of the mind as being in a state of “confusion” or “clarity,” respectively, the latter describing the state associated with direct insight and “serious attention.” In another analogy, he speaks of the confused mind as missing the point and being “off the mark.” In a conversation he remarks: “There are not two things, good and evil, but rather there is… attention which keeps you on the mark, or failure of attention which makes you go off” (1985b, p. 157).[v]

Interestingly, Bohm’s solution to fragmentation mirrors to an extent Divine Humanity’s concept of Awakening, Firsthand Experience and “Second Attention.” The unawaken person views the world in separate and dualistic terms (good and evil, light and dark, male and female) where the seen and materialistic world are the primary aspects of life. Consciousness is based on a separation of subject and object. Contrary to this, the awaken person views the world as One and in non-dualistic terms that interpenetrate or mutually permeate. Awakening is not immediate but gradually occurs with the realization of the Oneness of subject and object.

 

[i] It may also be a person’s religion and spiritual belief.

[ii] Love in its pure meaning is unity or oneness.

[iii] Ib Ravn, Chapter 2: David Bohm on the Implicate Order in Ontology, Physics, Epistemology and Human Existence, http://www.ibravn.dk/22126-impordgoodlife-2.htm

[iv] Jung appeared to be undecided in his own mind about the question of the ontological status of the archetypes (see e.g., 1968d [1936], p.58; see also Dourley, 1993); and this state of affairs has led to considerable controversy. But I believe that the ambiguity was necessitated by Jung’s inability to scientifically reconcile his conviction that the archetypes are at once embodied structures and bear the imprint of the divine; that is, the archetypes are both structures within the human body, and represent the domain of spirit. Jung’s intention was clearly a unitary one, and yet his ontology seemed often to be dualistic, as well as persistently ambiguous, and was necessarily so because the science of his day could not envision a non-dualistic conception of spirit and matter.

Jung’s dualism is apparent in his distinction between the archetypes and the instincts which required for him a polarization of the psyche into those products derived from matter and those derived from spirit. He imagined the psyche as the intersection at the apex of two cones, one of spirit and the other of matter (1969a [1946], p. 215). (Charles D. Laughlin http://www.scientificexploration.org/journal/jse_10_3_laughlin.pdf)

[v] Ib Ravn, Chapter 2: David Bohm on the Implicate Order in Ontology, Physics, Epistemology and Human Existence, http://www.ibravn.dk/22126-impordgoodlife-2.htm

The following is excerpted from Do You Like Jesus—Not the Church?

There is only one race and that is the human race whose divinity is its unity and its humanness is its diversity. Hate and conflict based on a certain pigment color of skin is encouraged and propagated by a dualistic consciousness reinforced by dogmatic religions and cultural, social and material inequality.

Our individual sense of reality (of separateness or duality) is just an extension illusion of our basic core sense perceptions. Our eyes perceive separation between us and all things viewed. This constant reinforcement tricks us into thinking and believing we are separate and islands unto ourselves. Reinforced by messages from childhood, we build stronger and thicker walls around our islands to protect us (the unhealthy ego). This core belief leads to behaviors and actions based on fear and protective neurosis of the unhealthy ego. Constant vigilance is needed to overcome and release our dualistic thinking, dualistic believing, and behaviors that are attached to this false paradigm of dualism.

Oneness Equals Mental Tranquility

When the two hemispheres of our brains are united in an interpenetration of the logical and the intuitive, we experience reality not as separate from us but as a part of us and us as a part of it. This breaks down the barrier between our ordinary minds and our enlightened minds. The mirror of our minds will then reflect things in their true, original state.

There still may be dust on our mirrors, but we will see clearer than the ones that remain stuck in a dualistic reality. When we realize that reality is not based on an either-or, us-them paradigm of duality, we will finally discover a great peace within ourselves. There is great solace in knowing that we may be both enlightened as well as deluded. We do not have to be one or the other. We do not have to win or lose. This shift alone will transform us from self-centered beings into divine human beings that are participating in a journey of life and experience along with all other humans and all other creatures of the earth.

Our minds become purer and calmer when we view and sense reality as united, not as a separate thing that may threaten our egotistic sense of safety and security. When we can see ourselves in all other things, not only another human being, but animals, moths, trees, and so forth, we achieve a state of being that is peaceful, benevolent, and compassionate. This is something not just achievable in meditation, but more importantly, in every waking second of our lives.

A follow-up to Blending, Death and Rebirth

Over the years, I have resisted referring to myself as a shaman. Basically, I didn’t want to be lumped in or identified with all of the workshop neo-shamans who feel that shamanism is nothing more than journeying. This implies that anyone can be a shaman, which makes it very attractive to the consumer. But why not call yourself a shaman or druid for material gain and status as the average person will accept you at face value just as the majority of people will accept organized religion and their mouthpiece at face value without using their common sense, just as with politicians—no research just acceptance.

In reality, it takes years and years of apprenticeship with an indigenous “person of power” to be considered a shaman. Traditionally, this is only after having been identified as a “chosen one” for training either by the current practicing shaman, the ancestors (through dreams), and/or a medical/soul crisis. With this set of criteria, you couldn’t get many people to qualify for a neo-shamanic workshop.

Even though my wife and I are holders of a Northwest Coast shamanic or medicine way’s lineage, I choose not to label myself as a shaman until recently. I am not seminar or workshop trained; my knowledge of shamanism flows from my firsthand experience of it. And there is the adventure that is a part of the seeking such as being shot at around midnight outside the ruins of Teotihuacan, barely escaping arrest on the streets of Lima, Peru, and feigning sickness to escape the clutches of a Yakuza and his lady.

The truth is that I have not been an observer but an active participant, initiate, and carrier of shamanic lineages, ranging from my shamanic initiation in a sacred lagoon in the Andes after having walked the Inca Trail in 1988 (pleases see the story below: Journey of Initiation: The Wizard of the Four Winds—February 1988), to my wife and I apprenticing with Mom and Vince Stogan, Northwest Coast Salish shamans, who passed on to us their shamanic lineage of bathing, burning, and healing. In line with the criteria above, Mom and Vince asked us if we would like to learn their “ways” only after having observed us doing our spiritual work. Moreover, our deeds of shamanic power have been witnessed and felt by others.

And then there is the subject of the exorcism. This is not an exorcism where a spirit is taken off of a person but where a spirit merges with the person. This is a descending spirit exorcism such as the one experienced by Jesus during bathing in the Jordan River when spirit in the form of a dove descended into Jesus.

My descending spirit exorcism, Ko Rei, occurred in Japan in front of Kobo Daishi’s mausoleum at midnight on the sacred mountain Kōyasan in October of 1987. Kobo Daishi was the founder of Shingon esoteric Buddhism. The exorcism was conducted by Sakano-san, an esoteric or shamanic priest from Osaka who had a dream about me. He had come to the mountain to find me even though he had no formal connection with the temple where I was staying. This otherworldly experience, an experience that thrust me through a tear in the fabric of dualistic reality, was the initial quickening of my awakening mind and resulted in a knowing of radical nondualistic interpenetrating reality.

With my decades of experience, it then makes sense that I approach this subject of shamanism not solely from an archeological or scholarly approach but from my direct experience of the subject matter.

Shaman – a word that births a prism of images and connotations. Of course a shaman would be a practitioner of shamanism, which Mircea Eliade defined as a “technique of religious ecstasy.” This is a definition that is problematic just as the terms shaman and shamanism are wrought with a magnitude of problems when applied cross-culturally. Let’s for the time-being refer to a shaman as a “wise person.” This reference cuts across all cultures. All cultures have been known to have and still have wise individuals within communities. As with the term shaman, we are once again faced with settling on a definition for wisdom. Let me explain my pondering thoughts on wisdom.

Wisdom derives from the following formulas: information without experience remains just information: I = I; information combined with experience results in knowledge: IE = K; wisdom flows from the combination of knowledge and its experience: KE = W. Experience is the source. As we may see, we are in the information age but not close to an age of knowledge. Furthermore, we are light years away from an age of wisdom. You can’t achieve individual wisdom if the majority of your time is spent staring into a box (smartphone) of information. A focus on information separates a person from nature—the source of knowledge and experience. But why is experience so necessary to the practice of shamanism?

Neuroscientists provide a glimpse into its importance. They have been exploring the varying anatomies of individual brains and have discovered that “genes, environmental exposures, experience, and disease help wire our neurons differently.”[i] Let’s explore each of these subjects individually:

• Genetic: there is a theory called “gene-culture co-evolution.” Basically, it is research into how culture shapes our genetic makeup. According to Herbert Gintis: “Human characteristics are the product of gene–culture coevolution, which is an evolutionary dynamic involving the interaction of genes and culture over long time periods.”[ii] If this is true then it would make sense that the neurons of a Lapland wise person would be wired differently than a Peruvian wise person.
• Environmental exposures: mythology, folklore, ceremonies, and ritual are highly environmentally driven and influenced. It stands to reason that a wise person living in Iceland would perform rituals and ceremonies based on their cosmology, mythology and folklore different than an Amazonian wise person.
• Experience: This is a key to our intrinsic self and experience is our personal gateway to wisdom. A wise person in the Pacific Northwest would have different environmental experiences than a wise person in the Amazon.
• Disease: In the past centuries certain diseases have been attributed to supernatural causes such as the tuberculosis outbreak in late 19th Century New England was blamed on Vampirism.

As witnessed above, a wise person is molded by their genes, environment, experience and possibly disease as are all of us (one of the traditional means of a “calling” to shamanism is a medical crisis). Within a community we would be subjected to the same environmental influence. Each of us would have a different genetic makeup, and each of us would have similar but different individual experiences. However, what has not been considered is each individual’s soul and its level of evolution. Of course for this to be a consideration as a viable addition, reincarnation would have to be ones belief.

It stands to reason that a wise person for his/her community could be considered one or more of the following: philosopher, mystic, visionary, healer. Any of these abilities witnessed by deeds would identify a person as a wise one. At this point we could identify the wise one as a shaman whereas a shaman, in a general sense, would be at the very least a healer. A wise one or shaman would have a culturally influenced genetic and environmental makeup with unique and intrinsic personal experiences. These aspects cannot be replicated by participating in a workshop/seminar on neo-shamanism.

This leads us to the fact that the term shaman and shamanism cannot be broadly painted in the same tones across different cultures—as the neo-shamans would want you to believe. Shamanism is not and has never been an organized religion with dogma and doctrine. But this is exactly what the neo-shamanism movement has attempted to do by establishing a cross-cultural doctrine of cosmology consisting of an upper, middle and lower world and assessing these worlds through the sole method of drumming. This cosmology and the process to reach this trinity of worlds would seem strange and foreign to Vince Stogan and other elder shamans such as Zinacantec shaman Anselmo Perez. He journeys in his dreams to the meeting place of the Ancestors to learn the powers of the shaman such as the prayers that are needed to be recited when curing his patients. “The Ancestors represent the first people who learned how to plant corn, praise their creator, and live as proper human beings… they are not anyone’s direct ancestors but supernatural beings who guard the entire community.”[iii] Are these supernatural unseen beings in an upper or lower world? No, they reside in the nearby mountains. In other words the unseen otherworld blends with our world; and in their specific case—in the mountains.

I’ve participated in ceremony with Anselmo. There was no drum beating or lying down with a cloth over our eyes—just prayers, incense, candles and sharing many liters of posh (alcohol). To a certain extent, posh represents our struggles of life. It “is considered a powerful healing substance and also a cause of sickness for the hangovers are unbearable. Everyone who drinks offers the spirit of all that is joyous and terrible in life.”[iv] In my case, I was not inebriated and without any hangover the next day; in fact during the ceremony, there was no real effect on my usual state of nondualistic consciousness.

One of the key factors of a shaman’s proficiency is his or her level of sensitivity, to be open and aware of the intertwining forces of the otherworld and the earth, and the ability to access both knowledge and wisdom. At any time, a person with this level of ability may access the otherworld without outside stimulus. The reason why this is possible? Radical nondualism is their reality. Shamans experience life as being simultaneously ordinary (rational) and non-ordinary (non-rational). This is a consciousness of radical nonduality that is the fundamental principle and foundation of perennial philosophy.[v]

Altered State Consciousness Is One of Radical Nonduality

The true and narrow path to becoming a “wise person” – a person of power—whether that person is called shaman, druid, wizard, goði or mystic—is difficult and takes years to achieve. But do not equate the tools with the state of being.

It is also important to know that there are no bad or evil spirits that we need to protect ourselves from their potential harm. Protection is physical and/or mental separation, which only influences and promotes the continuance of a dualistic consciousness. Energy is energy; however, there are unseen energetic forms that may attach themselves to our bodies, which may cause physical symptoms and problems that traditional medicine is not able to diagnose or heal. These vibrational energies are, in most cases, not compatible or in harmony with our vibrational bodies and minds.

As a final note, our shamanic heritages are important and their knowledge and purity needs to be respected and maintained. Each heritage is unique and intrinsic to its own culture and cosmology. There cannot be “a one size fits all” mentality.

[i] Melissa Healy, The Seattle Times, Sunday, June 23, 2013, A7.

[ii] Herbert Gintis, “Gene–culture coevolution and the nature of human sociality,” February 14, 2011, (http://rstb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/366/1566/878)

[iii] Walter F. Morris, Jr., Living Maya, 153.

[iv] Ibid, 160.

[v] I have traveled for thirty-five years to different parts of the world, seeking wisdom and the myth, magic, and lore of elders and indigenous people. I have sacrificed self to self. My experience of listening, looking, and learning flowed from indigenous elders, healers, and shamans from all over the world. It also comes from my interactions with the young and old of other races and cultures, and emanates deeply from my own soul wisdom. This knowledge is what I refer to as “first knowledge.” It is knowledge that is woven throughout and found in all the first people’s spiritual/religious traditions on this earth. This first knowledge has been referred to as primordial knowledge or the Primordial Tradition (perennial philosophy). As such, it portrays universal themes, principles, and truths. In other words, “the term Primordial Tradition is utilized to describe a system of spiritual thought and metaphysical truths that overarches all the other religions and esoteric traditions of humanity.” (http://www.primordialtraditions.net/.) Furthermore, “the perennial philosophy proposes that reality, in the ultimate sense, is One, Whole, and undivided—the omnipresent source of all knowledge and power. We do not perceive this reality because the field of human cognition is restricted by the senses. But the perennial philosophy claims that these limitations can be transcended.” (G. Philippe Menos and Karen A. Jones Menos, 14^th Annual Conference of the Academy of Religion and Psychical Research: “Revelation and Inspiration: Paranormal Phenomena in Light of the Kundalini Paradigm,” May 21–23, 1989, 3.)

Decades ago when I did wellness consulting to government and major corporations, I used the following analogy:

I’m standing on a river bank and I hear a cry for help; I dive in and save the drowning person; soon as I get back on the river bank, I hear another cry for help; I swim out and save another person; this sequence keeps occurring one after another; saving one and then having to save another…

Instead of saving one person after another, what I need to do is go upstream and see who is pushing people into the river…

Band aid approaches are easy (the solution for decades); progressive transformation is not…

This is our situation today. The roots of our problems are the corrupt institutions: Government, Corporations/Banks/Wall Street and Organized Religion.

And it seems like the “sheep” are staying asleep as we have two corrupt and lying potentials for POTUS. The only hope of progressive change and the only one not pushing people into the river is Bernie Sanders.

 

It is in the west of the Four Winds where we experience the blending of light into dark, the “I” merging with the “We.” It is here where we symbolically face death—the death of the old dualistic ruled self. The west is the territory of the heroic earth warrior and the shaman. “It has often been observed that nearly all religions have arisen out of the ‘supernatural’ traditions of Shamanism, a set of beliefs common to virtually all tribal peoples, and known to have been practiced since the dawn of human culture. The shaman is a magician, mystic, healer and poet….”

My knowledge of shamanism flows from my firsthand experience of it. I have not been an observer but an active participate, initiate and carrier of shamanic lineages ranging from my shamanic initiation in a sacred lagoon in the Andes after having walked the Inca Trail in 1988, validation of my power by Anselmo Perez, a Zinacantepec shaman from the mountainous city of Chamula (please see my page on Chicken, Candles and Posh), to my wife and I apprenticing with Mom and Vince Stogan, Coast-Salish Shamans, who passed on to us their shamanic lineage of bathing, burning, and healing. Our deeds of shamanic power have been witnessed and felt by others. My shamanic knowing is from firsthand physical-sensory experience. Thus, I approach this subject not from an archeological, scholarly, or “workshop” approach but from my direct experience of the subject matter. Vince once stated that I had the strongest hands (healing) that he had ever seen. Since there is always an imperfection to perfection, he also said I was impatient and too fast in healing. Patient is a trait I am continuously working on.

Traditionally, Shamanism has been identified as a journey of the soul conducted by the shaman known as a master of the spirits. A shaman is a person with the ability to connect the profane or earthly existence to the sacred, the otherworld and thus provide a link between the otherworld and earth. He or she is a visionary and what I call a ‘pathfinder to the soul.’ Shamans are dreamers, philosophers and non-dogmatic religious guides and teachers.

A shaman is also a ‘person of power’ who dream-voyages to the otherworld for knowledge and freedom. This is the freedom from our ego-self—the unhealthy ego. The shaman helps others, and themselves, escape from the imprisonment of anger, guilt, resentment and greed. This gives one freedom to love and to be loved.

 

There are indications of Óðinn and Þórr’s connection to shamanism. The accepted “text book” on shamanism is Mircea Eliade’s Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy. “In Shamanism, Eliade cites Óðinn’s Hávamál ordeal, his eight-legged horse, his shape-shifting ability (as described in Ynglinga saga ch. 7) and that of other wizards who depart their bodies and perform actions in animal shapes, and the various descents to the underworld in Norse literature as all being typical of shamanic practices… Likewise, Þórr performs several types of activity characteristic of shamans in his travels to the otherworld.” For example, Þórr protects the community (humanity) from supernatural beings and brings back objects of power which are of use to the community. Even Frigg and Freyja have their shamanic feathered clothing—their falcon-dresses; a motif of flying to the Otherworld.

Additionally, people of power such as shamans may be termed “galdra smiðir, ‘smiths of incantations.’”[i] The traditional view of a smith is the blacksmith or swordsmith. What they both have in common is fire. Fire is a transformational agent that can turn raw iron into a sword. Water is also used by the smithy in the transformational process. Our bodies are mostly composed of water and, when combined with our inner heat and the power of our voice, magic happens.

One of the Old Norse words for “spell, incantation”[ii] is galdr, “derived from a word for singing incantations.”[iii] One of the most recognizable incantations is abracadabra. In Aramaic, the phrase is avra kehdabra. The chant is as follows: aaa-raaa-kaaa-daaa-raaa (a pronounced ah). It means “I create as I speak (resonate).” Galdr, singing incantation or song, is fundamental to rites of transformation and assessing power. In shamanic cultures, galdr is referred to as a “spirit song.” These are quested for and intrinsically unique to the individual shaman. However, there are set songs to accomplish such things as opening a stream or river for the rite of sacrificing self to self of bathing. In the Northwest Coast tradition, the quest is for four consecutive days. My wife and I both carry a spirit song. I assisted Vince Stogan once when a few people were questing for a song. None received a song. As I stated: “Fate: power, is consistent with one’s inner nature. It can be sought, but seeking does not guarantee that one will attain it.”

The most commonly recognized song of spirit or spell songs are Óðinn’s. His spell songs are recorded in Hávamál and begin with stanza 146: “I know those spells no noble wife knows or the son of any man. One is called ‘help,’ and it will help you against strife and sorrow and every grief.”[iv] The spells end with stanza 163: “I know an eighteenth, which I never tell a maid or any man’s wife: much better if only one is aware (the last it is of my chants), except only her my arms enfold, or perhaps my sister.”[v] Óðinn’s spells only tell us the purpose of the spell. The song that activates the spell is not revealed, as this knowledge of power would only be orally taught.

For many people, the most recognizable section of Hávamál is the one that precedes Óðinn’s spell songs—his sacrifice self to self on Yggdrasill and his discovery of runes. “I know that I hung in the wind-torn tree Nine whole nights, spear-pierced, Consecrated to Odin, myself to my Self above me in the tree, Whose root no one knows whence it sprang. None brought me bread, none served me drink; I searched the depths, spied runes of wisdom; Raised them with song, and fell once more thence.”[vi] Once again, we see the importance and the need for a song of spirit—galdr.

One concluding point concerning Óðinn’s sacrifice on Yggdrasill, it seems from the description that Óðinn is hanging upside down (“I searched the depths…”). This would indicate that a person seeking hidden knowledge would need to “inverse” their view of the world and reality as it is commonly viewed. Furthermore, in this head-down position the view is not of the sky but of the earth; the depths of the earth where the knowledge is hidden.

 

Shamans or physicians of the soul are known as ‘wounded healers ’ Their ability and power to heal and perform feats of magic and psychic/spiritual wonders is due to their own personal healing and ascetic training and sacrifice.

Having experienced their death and re-birth as well as the healing of their wounds through the earth, the shamans become the guardians and the protectors of the earth. The earth, the symbolic mother, is the teacher and the sacred source of vitality for the shaman as he/she develops a living, nurturing relationship to all of Mother Nature. The landscape of the Great Mother provides the shaman with the opportunities to face fears and to become a person of power.

Questing in caves and purifying in streams and the ocean, the shaman experiences the death of the old self and the re-birth of the new as a child, guardian of the earth and a person of love and power. To the shaman, the veil between this world and the Otherworld is at its thinnest near running water. Being fluid, mysterious, purifying, life-giving, as well as life-taking, living water is sacred and a source of spiritual power. This is the reason why one of the earliest forms of symbolic death and re-birth, full immersion bathing, was and still is performed in swiftly flowing streams and rivers. This is the original type of spiritual baptism, not bringing with it membership into an organization such as the Christian church, but rather purification through a symbolic birth from the ‘womb of the earth.’

 

As masters of the otherworld and earth, shamans are sensitive to the wood, the stone and all the elemental forces that surround them. They look to the stars at night and to the four winds during the day. They listen to the magic roar of the streams and moaning surge of the oceans to learn the truth of the great mysteries of life. The shape of the clouds reveals the secrets of life and death. And the cry of the owl reminds them of their ancestors and the dark knowledge and wisdom of the earth.

Unlike priests, they are not gatekeepers between you and the otherworld. They are messengers not gatekeepers. Shamans have a knowing about the mysteries of the unseen otherworld (world of spirit) and the earth whereas the institutionalized priest deals only with heaven and then only secondhand. The most commonly known process of the shaman to reach the otherworld is through an altered state of consciousness brought about through various means such as extremes of temperature such as bathing, repetitive movement and repetitive sound such as drumming and chanting.

More to the point, one of the key factors of a shaman’s proficiency is their level of sensitivity, to be open and aware of the intertwining forces of the otherworld and the earth and the ability to access both for knowledge and wisdom. At any time, a person with this level of ability may access the otherworld without outside stimulus. The reason why this is possible? The answer: Radical non-dualism is their reality as spirit and matter interpenetrate. In other words, there is no longer a need for a stimulus induced altered state of consciousness. An altered state all along meant a consciousness of radical non-duality but, and this is a large but, with the addition of a person’s own unhealthy ego issues, which to a person with a dualistic consciousness is an altered state from their normal dualistic state. When my wife and I conduct a “feeding the spirits” burning, we are not in an altered state of consciousness induced by outside stimulus but accessing our radical nondualistic consciousness as we “call in the spirits.” No beating of drums or drugs just the power of our consciousness.

Altered State Is – One of Radical Non-duality

Over the past few decades, the surge of New Agers and Neo-shamans has resulted in misinformation and ignorance to the underlying fundamental knowledge and belief of shamanism. The accepted ‘text book’ of shamanism is Mircea Eliade’s Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy. It is a scholarly work. However, Mircea Eliade was an observer not an actual participant of what he observed to the level of an apprenticeship with the many cultures he observed. Subsequently, other scholars or professors who participated in a few altered states of reality ceremonies and then promoted theories and practices based on their few experiences; bring a disservice to an ancient paradigm of spiritual, religious and healing thought.

As I stated previously, altered states of consciousness occur through repetitive movement (dancing, running, walking, etc.), repetitive sounds (drumming, chanting, singing, etc.), hallucinogenic plants, breath control, fasting, isolation, and extremes of temperature (sweat lodge, cold water asceticism, etc.). But these are only tools to achieve a paradigm shift in one’s consciousness. This is to shift from a dualistic consciousness, where spirit and matter are separated to one of radical non-duality where the Otherworld of reality and this world of reality interpenetrate each other. A master shaman may then access the Otherworld at any time without any outside stimulus.

In other words, a great disservice has been conducted by leading people down a path (based on of one’s own lack of knowledge and power) where beating a drum and closing your eyes qualifies you to become a shaman or druid for that matter of fact. Of course, the true and narrow path to become a person of power whether that person is called shaman, druid or mystic is difficult and takes years to achieve. But do not equate the tools with the state of being. The only way to be a true person of power of mastery is to awaken to a radical non-dualistic consciousness.

For additional knowledge on this subject: Return of a Green Philosophy

[i] Mindy MacLeod and Bernard Mees, Runic Amulets and Magic Objects, 15.

[ii] Incantation also refers to chanting. Mantras are Buddhism’s chants. One of the best known is Mahayana Buddhism Heart Sutra. A lesser-known chant is the lesser spell of the Shingon Esoteric Buddhist deity Fudo-myoo. These chants have a singing quality to them and provide insight into galdr.

[iii] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galdr.

[iv] Andy Orchard, The Elder Edda: A Book of Viking Lore, 37.

[v] Ibid., 39.

[vi] Elsa-Brita Titchenell, The Masks of Odin, 126.

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness…” IN CONGRESS, July 4, 1776

As the Declaration of Independence states: “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness….” But what is happiness? Ask a hundred different people in different parts of the world and most likely we would get one hundred different answers. Happiness is very intrinsic to each individual. I was happy when I discovered the link between Bohm’s cosmology theories and the Norse-Germanic myth of the Well and World Tree. But that’s me. Happiness flows through me with the togetherness, wellbeing and love of my wife, children and grandchild. But that’s me. I’m happy visiting new and old lands with my wife ever seeking primordial knowledge. But that’s me. How about you?

According to Timothy J. Shannon, chair of the History Department at Gettysburg College, “Jefferson and other Enlightenment thinkers came up with was that happiness had its roots in humankind’s inherent capacity for reason and desire for material security.”[i] I would have to partially disagree as there is more to happiness than reason and material security. However, we may understand their thinking as the wheels of capitalism were just beginning to gain “steam” with the invention of the steam engine by James Watt in 1765. Watt’s invention powered the Industrial Revolution.  Eventually, the desire for material security would lead to the concept of the “Great American Dream.”

Since many people are driven by base level desires of safety, security, power, and sex, the common consciousness is material security—wealth and power. Our physical, emotional, and spiritual security is seldom focused on family, friends, and ancestors. It’s all about money (wealth) and the so-called power that goes with it.

The common vision is towards the future not the past. But the future is not real; the past is (this is another whole blog in itself). This future oriented consciousness drives the engines of capitalism. As is very evident today, this drive for the Great American Dream is fool’s gold for the majority.

The premise of capitalism has nothing whatsoever to do with happiness. The capitalistic paradigm is not based on equality. On the other hand, it is a doctrine of exploitation of people and natural resources—i.e. research the current situation in Puerto Rico[ii] concerning The Puerto Rico Oversight, Management and Economic Stability Act, or PROMESA.

Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders slammed PROMESA in a heated speech on the Senate floor on Wednesday, June 29. It’s important to note that Hillary Clinton has previously expressed support for the colonial-style bill. The following are segments of his speech:

“I rise in very strong opposition to the Puerto Rico Oversight, Management, and Economic Stability Act, the so-called PROMESA Act. This is a terrible piece of legislation, setting horrific precedent, and it must not be passed…

“This legislation strips away the most important powers of the democratically elected officials of Puerto Rico, the Governor, the Legislature, and the municipal governments as well. We must not allow that to happen…

“The bottom line is that the United States must not become a colonial master, which is precisely what this legislation allows. This legislation, I should add, is not just about taking away the democratic rights of the people of Puerto Rico. It is about punishing them economically. Since 2006, Puerto Rico has been in the midst of a major economic depression. In the last 10 years, Puerto Rico has lost 20 percent of its jobs. About 60 percent of Puerto Rico’s adult population is either unemployed or has given up looking for work. Over the last 5 years alone, more than 150 public schools have been shut down and the childhood poverty rate in Puerto Rico is now 58 percent.

“In the midst of this human suffering and economic turmoil, it is morally repugnant that billionaire hedge fund managers on Wall Street are demanding that Puerto Rico fire teachers, close schools, cut pensions, and lower the minimum wage so that they can reap huge profits off the suffering and misery of the American citizens on that island.

“We have to understand that Puerto Rico’s $70 billion in debt is unsustainable and unpayable. That is just a fact. You cannot get blood out of a stone. The reason — or one of the major reasons that it is unpayable — has a lot to do with the greed of Wall Street vulture funds. In recent years, vulture funds have purchased a significant amount of Puerto Rico’s debt. In fact, it has been estimated that over one-third of Puerto Rico’s debt is now owned by these vulture funds that are getting interest rates of up to 34 percent on tax-exempt bonds they purchased for as little as 29 cents on the dollar. Let me repeat that. Vulture funds are getting interest rates of up to 34 percent on tax-exempt bonds they purchased for as little as 29 cents on the dollar…

“Let us be clear. This issue is a significant part of what the entire debate regarding Puerto Rico is about. Billionaire hedge fund managers who purchased Puerto Rican bonds for pennies on the dollar now want a 100 percent return on their investment, while schools are being shut down in Puerto Rico, while pensions are being threatened with cuts, while children on the island go hungry.

“That is morally unacceptable. That should not be allowed by the Congress.”[iii]

The bottom line: Ask yourself—are the people of Puerto Rico happy?

 

[i] Timothy J. Shannon, What it means to pursue happiness, Seattle Times, July 4, 2016, A15.

[ii] Sanders Blasts ‘Colonial’ Puerto Rico Bill and Wall Street Vulture Funds in Powerful Senate Speech concerning The Puerto Rico Oversight, Management and Economic Stability Act, or PROMESA, http://www.alternet.org/election-2016/watch-sanders-blasts-colonial-puerto-rico-bill-and-wall-street-vulture-funds-powerful

[iii] Ibid.