The director of the holistic health clinic where I teach yoga, who is a friend of my boyfriend’s, knows a guy who tends the fire for these ceremonies. We went to this lady’s place in north Boulder. Chris came; we were to arrive no later than 10 am. on the winter solstice. Newcomers, I did not want to be late, and we were almost the first to arrive. Tony, the youngish fire tender, put us to work, clearing away the snow and the leaves from the round lodge and the circular altar with shovels and brushes.

It was barely zero degrees outside, the sun glimmering away like a golden jewel, hanging low in the sky. More people trickled in, bringing bouquets of flowers and pitching in. A couple of dogs sniffed around and played, I met our hosts, and the Mayan Indian who was going to lead the ceremony. Roatia is his name, but I heard “Well-wisher,” which is what he was in effect, and I called him this for the rest of this shortest day that we spent together.

The lodge was made out of a specific number of branches, looped together and tied with purple sashes. It was like a great spider. One by one, we lifted the lava rocks out of the middle, making rows on the outside of tens then four to collect exactly 64 stones. Tony built a wooden platform, upon which we stacked the stones. Roatia provided commentary. The women started the process; women, to whom was given a great honor by the leader of our ceremony, acknowledgment of our creative and destructive powers. The men were deemed the witnesses. The stones, Roatia said, were going to reflect back what we put in them. So, it might be best to leave them blank. However, he guided us to remember all the mothers, and grandmothers. One by one we stacked the lava rocks on the pyre.

The great pile of 64 stones was then wrapped from the south to the east by branches peaking like a teepee. Meanwhile, the alter was decorated by a large staff with a curved end. On this crest paraded a few feathers, below, an abalone shell with a blood red stone, a bowl of fruit: bananas, mangos, blackberries, which slowly froze, flowers, chocolate…

My feet were beginning to freeze in my thin-soled boots on the packed snow. I found a big piece of bark to stand on. I smiled broadly as Roatia caught my presence, and he held my glance, smiling back at me. Where had we met before? he asked. The lodge was covered by great canvases, and they were tucked in snug around the edges.

It was time to light the fire, and the women were given the task by Roatia. We were to ignite it, and the men took over the task of making it big and hot. Smoke wafted from it, as the water heated off the wood. We had a chance to snack and talk together. The fire nice and hot from the front, we alternated roasting our fronts and our backs. The great soft golden retriever Lucky greeted everyone, standing right on the alter and carrying away a flower.

In the freezing air upon the snow the thirteen of us stripped down then when we were given the go-ahead into bathing suits and sarongs, T-shirts/shorts and towels. Shoes off in the lodge, and bring “all the water in the world” to next to the lodge, where it was going to be added to a large wooden bucket. Down to bear feet, women first, we went around from the south to the west. We were smudged by the hostess, brushed down with two great big feathers and we filed into the lodge, one by one, sitting down on our towels in the sand in the lodge. My feet tingled thickly and numbly, I wrapped them in my yellow semi-fuzzy robe, and wondered if it did any good.

The men filed in, Elizabeth sat, Roatia sat, and Tony began to bring in the lava rocks, one by one, one pitch-fork at a time. Roatia held the fork with the glowing red-hot rock, said the first one was for the moon. He commented further, and then place the rock in the pit in the middle. One lady sprinkled juniper on it, and it sparkled like gunpowder. Elizabeth then sprinkled something that seemed to be some kind of golden resin. It melted and went up in smoke, releasing its perfume and blessing. Sometimes it even caught fire, and Roatia would go “mm hm,” and Elizabeth would say “mm hm.” The second rock came in, this time, for the stars, or the sun, or the people. Or the children, for Jeff, for a grandmother, and each time, the juniper and the resin sparkled, smoked and melted.

After ten or so stones went in the pit, Tony brought a bucket of water and some flowers, ditched his shoes, and came into the lodge too. By then, it was getting warm in the lodge from the beaming lava rocks. Tony was huffing and puffing from the exertion and the cold.

When the canvas came down over the small, rounded door, it was pitch black. Roatia said some things, invited us to sing, pray, ask for healing, etc. He began dumping water from the bucket by dipping the flowers. The steam was instantaneous, HOT HOT HOT! I breathed through only my mouth, and joyously letting it envelop me, welcome sweat percolating on my face. My nose started running, it smelled SO GOOD! I huffed and puffed like Roatia and Elizabeth and the others, entering in to the chants and the songs, but mostly huffing and puffing and hooting and wooting. Some of us sat in silence in the pitch-blackness, in the sweat-lodge. NOt me, this time. I’ve been to a healing ceremony before, and although prayers and requests for healings were encouraged, I had sat silent. I didn’t waste much time, and I asked, out loud, with my voice, for healing my tummy.

The door opened, and the short little solstice sun greeted us with cool, crisp winter air. Tony went and got more rocks, pitch-fork by pitch-fork, the ladies sprinkled their medecine. Tony got more water, and a fresh collection of sprigs of flowers.

The second round, Roatia said, was for me. Wow. A whole round just for me. I resolved to welcome it, all the extra special attention, because I deserved it, instead of being mortified. Roatia prayed for all the best for me and my belly, because I deserved it. We all deserved the best. After all the rocks were in place, and Tony was seated back in the sweat lodge with us, the canvas came down again and it became pitch-black, and the steam started again as Roatia poured it on the nearly red-hot gleaming rocks with the flowers, and his chanting came on full force, and he reached over and beat me with the flowers, and I was sopping wet. Ashley squeezed my hand from one side, Elizabeth, the woman with the red healing hands, as Roatia said, squeezed my hand from the other.

We did a total of five “doors,” Roatia quite excited at the best positioning of the door, perfectly letting the sun peak in a little lower each time. The last opened up right after the sun disappeared behind the mountains. Glowing red hot like those lava-rocks, we filed out of the hut and replaced our clothes which had been layed out and piled on benches, drifts, and tailgate. As I replaced my layers, my wool hat was one of the first things on, and by the time I zipped up my boots, the ends of my hair were frozed stiff! Roatia, still barefoot and bare-chested, walked by and gave me some chocolate and a big smile. Big smiles all around, as we rejoined by the ends of the big fire, surrounded by love, loved ones, and the setting sun, and a lumbering fire.

I felt as fresh and clear as a daisy, content and calm.

I want to write here. Every day. There is so much that I want to do a little of, every day. Yoga, meditation, exercise. Prayer, writing. Healing visualization. Every day.

Holidays, pah! High stress and activity to lazy extremes. Laying around, House marathons.

Out with the old, in with the new year. I’m ready to lay some new grooves.

We heard from our Democratic Representative Diana Degette, whom I met at a brunch I went to years ago when I was going through a high-point of political activism with my dad as my date. Our democratic senator Ken Salazar spoke a few words, and Mark Udall the “Boulder Liberal” running for Senate on the Democratic ticket, who is also pro-alternate energy, education, and bringing home our troops… And one of my favorites, popular Denver mayor business-man, democrat, micro-brew beer man (formerly a geologist) whom I worked for at the Wynkoop Brewing Company in the late nineties. He was a very nice absentee owner, who made pleasant appearances at the brew-pub now and then again. Later I also worked for him as a temp- addressing his wedding invitations by hand when he was our new mayor, and I went to a city-council/mayor meeting one morning when I interned for the City Councilwoman from my district. Just last Friday night we had a 20th anniversary Wynkoop reunion, and he was there, and hugged me! The nice man stayed until the end of the night when we were all ushered out, goons and all the familiar faces from a fun job I had years ago.

And then Barack Obama said inspiring, and intelligent things. He called for personal responsibility too, which the libertarian part of me likes, and YES! Let’s tweak the system out so that it includes more and more of us. YES, infrastructure, and community effort! I just love being inspired for once. I’m on board!

I wanted to do transition out of the restaurant world with teaching yoga, but this is not a realistic money-making option, at least right now. There is some tightness in that market, as everywhere. Thanks to some pragmatic infusion into my thinking. I need to be making on average of $65 a day.

These days, I have become inspired again- in this political climate. I really like what Barack Obama has said about education being a priority in the United States. If we have good qualified people in the government, what’s really wrong with the government being a large employer? Programs in civil service and investing in our infra-structure; education, academics and sciences; green technology…

The ultimate responsibility: the people ensuring the government works for the people. A much needed revival of the Declaration of Independence:

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. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security.

Tyranny, which makes a sagacious use of every human need and indeed artificially creates more of them in order to exploit them all to the limit, recognizes the importance of guilt. And modern tyrannies have all implicitly in one way or another emphasized the irreversibility of evil in order to build their power upon it.

Hitler’s world was built on the central dogma of the irreversibility of evil. Just as there could be no quarter for the Jews, so the acts that eliminated them were equally irreversible and there could really be no excuse for the Nazi’s themselves…

It is no accident that Hitler believed firmly in the unforgivableness of sin…”

In St. Thomas Aquinas, we find a totally different view of evil. Evil is not only reversible but it is the proper motive of that mercy by which it is overcome and changed into good. Replying to the objection that moral evil is not the motive for mercy since the evil of sin deserves indignation and punishment rather than mercy and forgiveness, St. Thomas says that on the contrary sin itself is already a punishment “and in this respect we feel sorrow and compassion for sinners.” (Summa Theologica) In order to do this we have to be able to experience this sin as if it were our own. (Original italics) But those who consider themselves happy and whose sense of power depends on the idea that they are beyond suffering any evil are not able to have mercy on others” by experiencing the evil of others as their own. Ibid.

Have I been a tyrant? Expecting inhuman perfection from myself, being so violent towards me, having spotted an unforgivableness of my being. I noticed my frigidity towards others, sometimes… holding them responsible to a stoic point of callousedness.

My turning point is compassion towards myself. Transformation. An inner peace exuding non-violence, not to myself, nor to anyone. Liberating the oppressed and the oppressor.

Gandhian non-violence-not the means and the ends, but a means to an end…

I have read and pretty much enjoyed Derrida’s work on democracy- Politics of Friendship (1997). His style is not at all straightforward, but his point is good as highlights oppositions and shows possibilities. The fun has been in the analysis.

We should continue to strive to have more friendship in our democratic community… it is a work in progress.

I find interesting the classifications Aristotle describes in friendships, including what struck me as a foundation for the concept of “best friends” (the sacred kind of childhood) and for the other various relationships there are such as the more mundane kind of friendship among people living together in a community. These Aristotelian distinctions have come to life in my experience, and so I thought I’d share the eloquent discussion on the topic.

The following is a synopsis of Aristotle’s commentary in Derrida’s words on friendship and the relationship among the three kinds of friendship. Derrida’s purpose is not to privilege the great discourses on friendship or to submit to their authority, but to question the process and logic of canonization… he wants to analyze forces and procedures that have created hegemonic concepts and marginalized others. He questions Aristotle’s axiomatic and hierarchy creating power. I will leave out his peppering of Greek terms, and embark from the observation that there are three kinds of friendship- friendship of virtue, of pleasure, and usefulness. Friendship of usefulness is political friendship, as in democracy, the goal is to yield as much friendship in the polis as possible.

Political friendship is attentive to equality as well as to the thing (the affair), to the former as much as the latter…(my italics) This is what political friendship ‘looks to’ and what concerns it. As in a market, in commerce between buyers and sellers. Equality and the thing, the equality of things, therefore the third party and the common measure: an account and a fixed wage [gage] are necessary: a salary, a fee. a counter -value. Aristotle quotes Hesoid: “A fixed wage for a friend”, which has sometimes been translated: “Short reckonings make long friends”. When it is grounded on consent, consensus, convention, this friendship is at once political and legal. It is then, a matter of homology or reciprocity, as in the case of a contract, an agreement between two subscribing parties. When, on the other hand, the parties leave the matter to each other’s discretion, in a sort of trust without contract, credit becoming an act of faith, then friendship ‘wants to be’ moral, ethical, and of the order of comradeship. Why is it that in this latter case recriminations and grievances abound? Because this ethical friendship is against nature. Indeed, those who associate themselves in this way wish to have both friendships at once, one in the service of interest (based on usefulness) and one appealing to virtue (the reliability of the other)…Aristotle thus describes a tragedy as much as a comedy, major and minor calculations: this irrepressible desire to overinvest in a friendship or a love, to count on a profit in renouncing profit, to expect a recompense, if only a narcissistic or symbolic one, from the most disinterested virtue or generosity. With the help of a distinction which should not be judged a summary one, Aristotle never gives up analysing the ruses that enable one friendship to be smuggled into another, the law of the useful into that of pleasure, one or the other into virtue’s mask. Those who prefer ‘ethical’ friendship believe it possible to dispense with the legal, nomic form of political friendship; they disregard the contract or mutual agreement, thus opening themselves up to disappointment. Moreover, it is in ‘useful’ friendship, and within it, then, political friendship, that the greatest number of grievances and recriminations are encountered. Friendship based on virtue is, by definition, impeccable. As for friendship based on pleasure, friends part and bonds unravel once the enjoyment has run its course: the friends have had their delight, they have given, received, offered; they have had, and do not request anything more. Of course, all the forms of ‘aporia’ then spring up — aporia is Aristotle’s word [logical impasse]– as to the criteria of the just, and when we must determine what is just from the vantage point of quantity or quality; the vantage point of the enjoyment of what is given or of the rendered service. On this count, how are we to get the person giving and the person receiving to agree? Who gives and who receives? It goes without saying that if political friendship considers the ‘homology’ (the contractual agreement) and the thing, it is less just, its justice is less ‘friendly’ than ethical frienship, which counts on intention, will, and choice. The fundamental conflict lies in the opposition of the beautiful and the useful: the ethical friendship is certainly ‘more beautiful’, but useful friendship is more necessary.

A big theme question in the book was “How many friends?”

When virtue is at stake:

At stake is virtue, which is no longer in nature, this virtue whose name will remain suspended, without an assured concept, as long as these two laws of friendship will not have been thought. For the reliability of the stable that on which the virtue depends — therefore liberty, decision, and reflection — can no longer be only natural. No more so than time, which does not belong to nature when it puts primary friendship to the test. In the history of the concept of nature — and already in its Greek history — the virtue of friendship will have dug the trench of an opposition. For it obliges Aristotle himself to restrain the concept of nature: he must oppose it to its other — here to virtue — when he classes friendship among stable things, in the same way as happiness belongs to self-sufficient and autarkic things. It is the same immanence that provides shelter from external or random causalities… Since friendship does not — and above all must not — have the reliability of a natural thing or a machine; since its stability is not given by nature but is won, like constancy and ‘fidence’, through the endurance of a virtue, primary friendship… There may well be other forms of friendship (for example, says Aristotle, with children, animals, and the wicked), but they never imply virtue, nor equality in virtue. For if all the species of frienship (the three principal ones, according to virute, to usefulness, to pleasure) imply equality or equity, only primary friendship demands an equality of virtue between friends, in what assigns them reciprocally to one another.

“One soul in two bodies twain.” Indivisible. Can be found once in every three hundred years.

Then I ran into Maggie. She put her fingers into my head and as a healing maneuver she crunched some superfluous bones in my jaw. I was spitting out the nasty bone pieces for the rest of the dream. I was grateful.

I emailed her about it. This is what she said:

> Aloha again Lois,
>
> Well all I feel is that type of healing is very much what we do ‘energetically’.
> Bones cary so much mana (powerful energy). If they didn’t belong in your jaw, they were no
> longer serving you & I did whatever I did so you can be free that is a great thing.
> What is going on for you? Anything with your jaw…mouth…speaking your
> truth…etc?
> Hugs
> Maggie

That place in my head from where she released the extra bones was the same as when a couple of weeks ago my yoga teacher put her thumbs in my ears, told me to release and helped me turn my head better in triangle pose. It had felt wonderful. My yoga teacher is also someone I see for therapy- I have been working on healing that gut of mine. This lady has encouraged me to change my living situation. (Living with my housemate has been super stressful in terms of some economic difficulties.) So, just recently, some more difficulties arose and I told my housemate she needed to move out.

It was a situation I had been tip-toeing around with, not wanting to not shake things up too much. But it came down to me needing to not only speak my truth, but to accept something that had been coming, sooner than I thought it would come, and act on it when the time came. The living situation was no longer serving either of us, and it was time to speak my truth and change it up for the sake of better holistic health. The same thing had happened with my ex, interestingly enough he was in my dream.

I am feeling free!

I have taken some medication because of continued gut-aches, and I finally have some complete relief. I had checked in with my conventional doctor, and he said it didn’t sound serious or like anything to worry about. Whatever it is that I’m doing, seems to be progressing along quite well. The NMT is working, not overnight, but all the work I’ve been doing outside of conventional medecine is working!

Things are definitely changing. Life metamorphosizing. I feel positive about it all. I am moving into a cheaper place with a yard, and space for me and my kitties that I can afford. I am renting my house out. I have put it out there: I would like to manifest some responsible, reliable, respectful tennant(s). And I am moving in with my love and partner!

The Reconnection thing sounded the best in my gut (to my gut?) From the time I was quite young, I felt somewhat disconnected from the grand embrace of the universe. Just the idea of RECONNECTION brought tears to my eyes. I decided to let my intuition take over. More than anything I wanted to experience this.

The principles behind Reconnection are like those behind acupuncture- energetically and with meridian lines in the body… but goes beyond acupuncture. It is pretty out there even for me; I won’t go into the background of this process. But the woman facilitator I met in doing this is amazing. At our first appointment together, which was an intuitive session, when she told me about herself, she told me that she aligns herself with God, and her guides. She does not do astrology nor Tarot or anything like that. She has been an intuitive since she was little, and in her room at the office she had an alter set up with a picture of Jesus, Paramahansa Yogananda, and what I found out later was a man called Bruno Groening.

The Reconnection took two sessions with a day in between. During the first session, as I was lying on the table with my eyes closed and Josie worked over me with her hands, I noticed that she began moving rather quickly from one side of the table to the other. After further sensing, it just didn’t feel like she was the only one in the room. I heard Josie’s movements by my head, but there was someone or something, angelic even, by my foot, and it was there for a while. The second day, she asserts that she does not make physical contact during the session, but I felt a distinct, concrete touch on my hair- twice.

Afterwards, conversation turned to how I was seeking healing for my gut. This is when she told me about Bruno Groening, and the Healing Stream. Bruno was a spiritual healer who created quite a stir in the 40s in Germany, and this is what I was to do:

Play some beautiful music, classical, or something without words, and sit or lie down with palms facing up, which enables one to collect energy. Invoke God, the greatest healer. Visualize the Healing Stream flowing through the body, and the disease exiting the body, perhaps as little black dots. Imagine the dots being taken away by a waterfall, or a hot-air balloon then burning up in the sun… ask God to take it away. Then, when there are no more black dots or if you are ready to finish up for the time being, imagine, in every possible way you can think of, yourself in an optimal state of health. Connect to the Healing Stream every day. All disease is curable. For Josie, she did this meditation and after fifteen months (seems kind of long, doesn’t it?) her knees which had hurt her chronically due to injuries became free of pain. But hey- a lasting cure is worth hard work!

Two days later, after being reconnected and spending a lot of time at the healing stream, I feel invigorated and full of hope robust faith; and I mostly, I’m feeling kind of high! Visualization is easy, and so is changing my perspective.

I went to see an intuitive last week and the session was amazing. It hit directly home. Even this dream and my feelings now lead to the prayers which came during the session:

I release everything and all things which do not belong to me… God, ignite the fire within me and enfold, protect and surround me with divine light and love, may nothing enter my energy field except by way of this light and love, may only the same vibration enter in and everything else I observe outside this field of energy. May I accept and allow a return to complete wholeness and wellness. Thank you for all mention here today. May I be abundantly blessed and abundantly bless others, thank you, thank you, thank you.

May I be aware of helpful and loving guidance, and my mother’s love around me, for she is around me a lot of the time. So are seven to ten other angelic entities! wow…

Last week, Dr. Schwartz had released some negative emotions that had to do with my systemic inflammatory response, ulcerative colitis. He said that I could fine, or I could cry and be emotional. If I was, then that was okay, I was just releasing.

I went home and took a nap. In my dream, my niece Christine was hungry for a meat-snack, and she boiled my cat alive. I could hear Walter meowing from inside the pot, and I was in pieces about it, sobbing and crying, devastated. I woke up crying and sobbing! I remembered that I was releasing, and the emotions left me.

I told Antonio about it last visit with him. His first thought was that my unconscious mind was telling me that I wanted some meat.

Then I told him about my stress that I may be need to move in a year or less, and I know the change will be awful for the cats to bear and there will be peeing on stuff when moving happens. The fact that I have three cats has been overwhelming me when I think about my living situation- should anything change. The possibility of change is there because a) Chris and I have tossed around the idea of living together sooner or later and b) my room-mate has been perpetually late on bills and reasonably partaking in household chores. Something needs to change in that scenario (the stress and resentment is negatively affecting my health) and- we have made changes in the bill situation and rent payment deadline/consequences for late payments. One of consequences is termination of her living here! That would be sad though, in a way, she is a dear friend and living with her has been wonderful, too. It is secure for me and my cats, but I had to draw a boundary.

The stress of maybe moving my life around, and the thought of my cats and their peeing has made me wonder what I was going to do with my cats if I had trouble keeping them- if they would pee all over our stuff. I love them dearly! But that behavior is unacceptable. I’m not a stranger to this thought that a part of me would rather “kill” the trouble-maker if they kept peeing on our stuff, than take the cat to a shelter. They would suffer so bad there! Antonio said how acceptable it really is be released from suffering, however, it was interesting that I formulated the sentence the way I had. This got me thinking. “Killing” Walter, was maybe a strictly logical thing to do, but contrary to what could feel as right. Also I am very devoted to my values (take care of my kitties even if it means sacrificing my life moving onward, perhaps, to take care of them)… I must have had such an incredible internal conflict, when the murderous thought arose. It perhaps brought itself to light in the dream that I had… such an “unacceptable” thought of offing my cat was so unacceptable to me that I must have repressed the worst of it. Or maybe it’s anger left over from the fourth time my cat peed on my bed, when he pissed on it right in front of me and I lost it.

Nothing really happened in the journey, that day. But perhaps that energy was released in my dream, and talking about it with Antonio opened a door for the transformation of that energy back into my consciousness, uniting thought and feeling. I just kept coming up against the void in the journey, and fell asleep. I did find the deer and the elephant, toward the end, and elephant wrapped her trunk around me and said that I was deserving of healing. I had not been able to affirmatively answer the question a few days ago. That belief of not deserving may have been quite a block in my healing. The affirmation from elephant was wonderful, and felt real. The King of the Underworld didn’t say anything, but it felt like he affirmed that NMT was serving me.

I watch my mind lately and it, in situations, jumps by default to blame. I play the victim. I find someone to blame.

I must remember to be loved, and to be love.

Shamanism, Sickness, and Healing

Traditional shamans viewed illness as “loss of the soul,” (Eliade, 8.) It was believed the human soul was a “precarious psychic unit, inclined to forsake the body and an easy prey for demons and sorcerers. (Eliade, 182) It was possible that a frightening dream caused the soul to depart the body, or the dead who were reluctant to leave took another soul with them, or the soul wandered off too far on its own accord. (Eliade, 301) It was then that the shaman was called and would find and capture the soul and place it back in the patient’s body. (Eliade, 215)

Renna gives us a modern explanation of soul loss:

The idea behind soul loss and retrieval is very straightforward: in traumatic situations, some part of one’s soul may split off and hide to escape the trauma. For example, we’ve all heard people speak of not remembering the instant of impact in a car crash, or “going numb” during an emotional crisis. This “splitting” is a useful survival technique but it becomes a problem if we remain fragmented after the trauma passes. Since this occurs on the spiritual plane, that’s where the search and retrieval need to take place. (Renna Shesso, www.harusami.com/soul2soul/althealing/retrieval.htm)

In instances of soul loss, traditionally the shaman would take a journey for the patient. (Eliade, 303) However, Antonio and Toby both say that it is much more effective to teach people how to take their own healing journeys. (interviews, fall 2007.)

It was believed that illness was sometimes caused by possession by evil spirits, and the shaman healed by expelling the demons. (Eliade, 215) Yet another cause of illness was believed to be the intrusion of harmful magical objects into the body by a sorcerer, and it was the duty of a shaman to remove them. Eliade, 300)

Antonio told me of a very formative experience for him in his shamanic training when he was working as a psychiatric nurse at a maximum security facility for the criminally insane. His experience accounts for energy that could have been interpreted by traditional shamans as a magical object intruding into a patient, causing harm.

I had the opportunity to walk through some of the darkest minds imaginable in that place. They wanted to kill you daily. That is energy that is there. It’s palpable, it’s very real. What I learned was one that this energy was there. Two, is that it could kill you. And three, most importantly, how to protect myself. So that experience was crucial to my practice and I learned that you know that if you don’t learn that you are in for a hard time because you will take in an awful lot of energy that can harm you. But like I say that process was absolutely essential for me. Most of the people that were there simply didn’t learn that. And they were destroyed. My best friend died at age 35 of a heart attack. (Antonio Arguello, interview, Nov 5 2007)

Antonio spoke of fear as something material that manifests in the unconscious mind.

[F]ear itself would manifest as something. Something material. It could be a dark shadow, it could be the bear, it could be some kind of fierce animal, it could be some kind of uncomfortable energy, all those kinds of things…. So down here in the unconscious there’s going to be stuff like fear, mistrust, things of that nature that exist here. So, the event is long over, what remains is the spiritual essence of this act. Energy. It’s actually energy, and if it were not real then it wouldn’t effect us in any way. But it’s very real and it exists. So this energy is always seeking to express itself, trying to get through here [into the conscious,] the job up here is to keep it down. So you got a lot of energy being expended right there to deal with this kind of stuff, and this stuff will always just kind of sneak out. It does affect our lives adversely. (interview)

The process of shamanism, he told me, is the transformation of the energy of those things. Antonio, regarding the expenditure of energy in the unconscious, said that this can lead to disease, that it depended on the amount of energy that was down there. If an event that traumatized a person has caused a lot of materialization of such demons, and the energy “down there” is “pretty huge,” it causes physiological changes in your body its leading to stress-related disease.” (interview)

Eliade tells us that “the recovery of physical health is closely dependent on restoring the balance of spiritual forces,” Eliade, 216.) Very much along the same line, in response to the question of what she believed illness to be, Renna wrote:

“To me, illness and disease are the human struggling in body, mind, heart, spirit and every way to meet the challenges of surviving in the physical world - not always successfully, as the world we live in is polluted, frenetic, way out of whack and not especially human-friendly. Healing is when we come back into balance, whatever that means for each of us.” Renna Shesso, correspondence, Nov 27, 2007)

Maggie talked about harmony in the physical and emotional body. “[Disease and illness is caused by] separation from our source energy, a separation from love, a choice to separate ourselves from our source. We talk about disharmony in the body and how does it get created. It is usually in emotional turmoil,” (Maggie Connor, interview Nov 1 2007.)

Toby discussed emotion as well, in conjunction to mental states. ”I think for the most part illness and disease are highly associated with our emotional states and the way we are thinking, so our mental states,” (Toby Marchand, interview Oct 22 2007.)

The examples above illustrate shamanic views on illness. For in order to heal, one must first identify disease. As Eliade noted, shamans know the “mechanism” of illness, therefore are able to heal. (Eliade, 31)

One form of healing is done through contacting the unconscious mind of the client. Maggie, Toby, Antonio, and Renna do journey work with their clients. They all also know how to do energy work in healing. All of my subjects except Maggie described the aid of animal spirits in the healing process conducted through journey work. (Interviews, fall 2007)

Gagan writes in detail about the role of the unconscious mind. She writes that a “fluid” relationship between the conscious and unconscious mind is central to psychological health. She explains that traumatic memories and unacceptable impulses are housed in the unconscious, and that they drain psychic energy from body and mind. Gagan, 65) This virtually echoes Antonio’s assessment. Gagan says that the unconscious is a “repository” not only for stuff that is repressed by an individual, but for healing forces as well. (Gagan, 65) She says that journeying and communion with a person’s animal spirits provides surrogate energies for the bonding experience ideally provided for infants and toddlers in developmental stages. (Gagan, 93) Journeying also provides a safe place to release pent up rage. (Gagan, 108)

Journeying

In ecstasy, one stands outside waking rational consciousness. According to Eliade, a shaman is able to enter into a trance and have his or her soul leave its body and travel either to the sky or the “underworld.” (Eliade, 5.) The terms shamans today like to use is “Higher World” or “Lower World.” Renna Shesso, one of the shamans I interviewed, explains: “ [the underworld] has nothing to do with a Hades-types underworld. It’s just one of three spirit-plane regions described by various cultures worldwide: an Upper World, a Middle World, and a Lower World.” (Renna Shesso, correspondence, Nov 27, 2007)

Eliade explains various shamanic journeys to the “underworld” from all around the globe. All of the shamans from different cultures described a different “place.” Yet despite the differences in detail, all of “underworlds” described shared certain common characteristics. Within each culture, the “underworld” was a “place” souls would go upon leaving their body. The experiences in the underworld or Lower World have to do with the beliefs of the particular culture. (Stutley, 7) Each would find a divinity there that was particular to their own culture. From a Jungian perspective, they are specific expressions of the deep archetype.

The shamans I interviewed illustrate the different conceptions of the Lower World. I asked each of them to describe to me what they experience as “the underworld.” Although each shaman I asked belongs to the same culture, the differences that they exemplify can be accounted for by the mixture of world-views our diverse culture possesses. Still, they share a common thread when the Lower World is conceptualized as the Jungian collective unconscious, source of archetypes.

The underworld- it’s the other side of the dichotomy, everything in creation is a dichotomy so where there’s tremendous light, there’s tremendous darkness… the underworld to me it’s different than maybe the Native American underworld or even the underworld of you know like Christian… like hell or purgatory. To me it’s like the un-manifest. It’s, nothing exists there, yet everything is possible there, and it’s purple black, it’s like a deep deep deep blackness you know those nights where it’s so dark, you just can’t see, you if put your hand out in front of you you just can’t see there’s not even starlight it’ that kind of darkness. I actually like it because there’s a peace to it. (Maggie Connor, interview, Nov 1, 2007.)

This sounds like one possible conception of the unconscious, described to me by Maggie.

Toby described a place where archetypal images reside.

In the underworld- it’s a place, a sacred place of a lot of safety and healing, also a grounding place. Obviously you’re going down to the earth, you’re going into the womb of the Earth Mother and down there reside totems, and other spirit helpers that can give you knowledge, teaching, wisdom, healing. You can just go down there to relax and just feel a sense of connectedness and grounding and not maybe necessarily get any intellectual wisdom or knowledge you can just go down there to hang out and feel good and come back. (Toby Marchand, interview, Oct 22, 2007.)

Renna’s description, although brief, is along the lines of Toby’s. “I meet my power animals there, [totems] and we converse. It tends to look like a realistic place in nature.” (Shesso)

Antonio described for me the complete shamanic world view, according to his sources. He explicitly used the terms unconscious, subconscious, and consciousness as he drew me a diagram.

[Gets a piece of paper.] So what I am going to do here is give you the shamanic view of consciousness. A lot of the time I talk about this stuff in terms of consciousness, a lot of the times I talk about this thing is in terms of spirit. When I talk about spirit what I’m talking about is this idea of life. The life that we carry within us so when I say spirit that is what I am referring to. Because everybody uses that term in lots of different ways…. So this area down here I am going to refer to as Lower World. I’m going to refer to this area up here as Upper World, and this [between them] is Middle world. Middle world is basically this world that we walk around in… and they [shamsns] use probably “Lower World” in several different ways… I think of it more in terms of the unconscious. Most people, let’s say that this is our daily conscious life. [Draws a small circle in the middle of the page.] So it usually touches on all these areas here (Lower, Middle, and Upper world) but to a limited degree. Let’s say you’re doing a meditative practice, then you’re getting into subconscious [draws a larger circle around the small circle in the middle] and mostly everything here [points below the circumference of the larger circle] is called the unconscious, or I’m going to call it or refer to it as Lower World. But also in the Lower World you can have access to the Upper World… Now beyond this, lets say the table here is the collective unconscious, and that is like we identify ourselves as Americans, or Catholics, or Bronco fans, or whatever. So that is the collective unconscious. Beyond that you get into cosmic consciousness… so that these things here extend out to infinity. And consciousness basically is that way in that it is, we pretty much limit ourselves. It’s a self-limiting kind of process. … I would say that what shamans do is just basically travel this whole spectrum of consciousness at will and intentionally for lots of different reasons… 73 (Antonio Arguello, interview, Nov 5, 2007)

Eliade says that this ecstasy, like ek stasis indicates, is a “coming out of oneself” that makes mystical journey possible. (Eliade, 467) He reports that the traditional shamans were more powerful, and could actually fly. (Eliade, 289) These days the shamanic journey is not interpreted literally, not exactly. Larsen notes that rather it is an “internal voyage” for “guidance.” (Larsen, 9) I have found that the shamans I spoke with are out on that question. It is not certain to what degree they themselves believe that the soul actually leaves the body in a journey, conceding how difficult it is to know about consciousness and its location in space and time geographically. It is highly likely that the voyage indeed has an internal component as it is unlikely that the Lower World is an actual place tied to the literal, conscious mind, if each shaman that journeys there sees it differently based on the content of their cultural underpinnings and the subjective content of their personal unconscious.

On this subject, my interviewees shared their views on the internal/external voyage question. It would seem that the contemporary shaman’s understanding of the journey is that it is both internal and external, and has to do with the enigmatic thing we now call consciousness.

Maggie also has a dichotomous view. I asked her, “Where do you go when you travel down there [the Lower World]?” She said:

Well it’s not like down there. In consciousness it’s really important to get this aspect I think. Michael Ludwitz calls it the “hamburger universe.” He says there’s this mentality of “down there.” It’s in our language, it’s in our grammar, but it’s in our consciousness in how we think in terms of “down there” versus “up there.” (Connor)

She described a cultural specific Christian world-view to illustrate common thinking to contrast her experience:

Like God’s in heaven, sitting, and Jesus is sitting on the right hand of the Father with all the saints and Mary… and everyone who’s worthwhile is in Heaven, right, up there in the clouds, away from us. And then anyone who just isn’t worth their salt is “down there” in hell with the Devil and they’re paying for their sins. But what’s interesting to me- it’s not anywhere. There is no up there or down there, it’s everywhere. [My italics] The underworld exists here, on this plane, in consciousness, it exists in people’s fears, in their anxieties in the things they become addicted to physically that keep them kind of chained to the physical, and then heaven exists on this plane as well in your consciousness. (Connor)

“So your soul doesn’t actually leave and go somewhere when it travels to the underworld?” I asked.

Well it depends on who you talk to… I’ve taken a shower, gone to bed, had a dream that I was being taught in caves with kukui nuts and an oil lamp, like we were hiding, so that we wouldn’t be found because of what I was learning. [At an earlier time one could get killed for transmitting sacred knowledge.] And the next day, my feet were all sooty and black. Who knows? I don’t know what happens. I don’t have the answer to the kind of stuff other than there’s a lot more going on than the dimension that we are aware of on a day to day basis. (Connor)

Toby had similar things to say, and references what sounds like the collective unconscious.

Yeah I think [the soul] does leave in the sense of what we call time and space… People talk [about] the underworld and maybe they perceive it being down in the earth… and that you’re somehow going down there and your psychic umbilical chord is connecting you to your body. I’ve read things about that but maybe its not even anything like what we call time and space. Maybe you’re still in yourself but the spirit world is in you anyway. Maybe there’s not this physical movement… I know there are techniques people use to travel to other people and they’ll actually travel to that person’s home and they can say, “Well I know they have a plant in that corner and they’ve got this type of TV,” and you can tell they’ve been in that room. So maybe in those levels people are moving through space and time across geography to get to a space, and then other times their journeying doesn’t have anything to do with moving through molecular space but it’s part of that unified oneness. (Marchand)

Nevertheless, a shaman is able to journey to gain knowledge, power, and to help others. (Gagan, 8 ) However, these days, shamans such as Toby and Antonio are teaching people to take their own journeys to heal, to get teachings and reclaim lost power.

Sometimes the journey is a literal one, like a medicine walk where one can experience visions (as conducted by Toby); or a metaphysical one, in which the journeyer goes to the “Lower World” to commune with animal or diety-type spirits acting as teachers. (Interviews, fall, 2007) Here the shaman explores the contents of the personal psyche and the wider collective unconscious, and encounters archetypal manifestations.

Spirits

Eliade describes shamans as having immediate and concrete experiences with gods and spirits. (Eliade, 88) A shaman has helping spirits, also known as “familiars,” “helping,” “assistant” or “guardian” spirits. A shaman also has access to tutelary spirits, which are divine or semi-divine beings that come during a shamanic seance. (Eliade, 88) Helping spirits can be souls of deceased shaman ancestors, or spirits of plants and animals. (Eliade, 91-92) Animal spirits help in the preparation of the ecstatic journey. (Eliade, 92) The horse was a powerful symbol of carrying a shaman into the sky in ecstasy. (Eliade, 467) Traditionally, a shaman controls his spirits and communicates with them. He or she may be possessed by spirits when these spirits are invited or otherwise seek to come into him or her. (Stutley, 29) No shamanic seance is possible without guardian and helping spirits, asserts Eliade. They authenticate the shamanic journey, reveal mysteries, and provide teachings. (Eliade, 95)

In my interviews I found that the journey is not achieved because of these spirit helpers, it is on the journey that one meets them. Traditionally shamans also encountered spirits on their journey, but now it does not seem that journeyers use animals to facilitate flight of the soul, nor make use of other ascension symbols such as a chain of arrows, a ladder, bridge, or rope, (Eliade, 121) each of which is a culture-specific form. The modern meditations shamans use to go into an altered state incorporate imagery of natural openings, such as a crack in a rocky outcropping or sidewalk, or a hole in the trunk of a tree. (Marchand, Arguello)

Spirits provide teachings. (Marchand) They assist in transforming negative energies. (Arguello) In metaphysical journeys spirit helpers teach the journeyer, and provide surrogate energies that one may have lacked in early development. (Gagan, 82)

Antonion also spoke of the manifestations of repressed emotions in the Lower World. These he called demons, or negative energies.

So let’s say somebody is attacked by a bear when they were a child, they are probably going to be pretty afraid of bears. So down here in the unconscious there’s going to be stuff like fear, mistrust, things of that nature that exist here. So, the event is long over, what remains is the spiritual essence of this act. Energy. It’s actually energy; and if it were not real then it wouldn’t effect us in any way. But it’s very real and it exists. So this energy is always seeking to express itself, trying to get through [into consciousness]. The job up here [in consciousness] is to keep it down. So you got alot of energy being expended right there [in consciousness] to deal with this kind of stuff. And this stuff will always just kind of sneak out. It does affect our lives adversely. So in the shamanic world and the reason the psychiatrists do not want to go here because they don’t know how deal with this. They prefer to leave it there [in the unconscious], put a lid on it kinda stuff becuase all it’s going to do is upset you. And the shamanic approach, goes here, goes here, and deals with this energy. (Antonio Arguello, interview, Nov 5, 2007)

Shamanism’s mission then is to deal with these energies that are inhibit the state of well-being in the client.

Have you ever been filled with a terrible yearning to become something new? Do you know what it’s like to be racked with a ferocious hunger to change your life? Speaking from experience, I know that such a state can sometimes feel heavy and dark. But I’m here to tell you that it can also be a tremendous asset. The key to transforming it into a gift, ironically, is to see it as a gift. So your assignment, Taurus, is to interpret your ache for transformation as a potent blessing. To do so will give you the power to perform magic you can’t even imagine yet.

My current topic: more diet changes for health.

Ecstasy

Gagan writes that the altered states of consciousness of ecstasy are achieved by narrowing the focus of attention. (Gagan, 43-44) Ecstasy, asserts Gagan, is the “voluntary use of an altered state combined with the intent to serve the community,” (Gagan, 32.) Ecstasy includes dreams, visions, and dialogue with spirits. (Eliade, 115) It is through ecstasy that a shaman is able to access other realms and do shamanic healing. Toby emphasizes that being able to do these things is a very natural process able to be done by anyone. Toby and Antonio have said that everyone that has come to them wanting to learn their techniques are able to do so. Toby and Renna say that children often have experiences of the spirit world and energy. Toby claims that often parents explain these away as simply imagination. (Personal interviews, fall 2007)

Stutley claims that “genuine ecstasy is a psychogenic reaction according to the dictates of the visionary’s mind, so expressing the conscious and unconscious desires of the ecstatic shaman,” (Stutley, 28.) In my research on the ecstatic experiences of the shamans in my study, I have found that ecstasy does not originate in mental nor emotional conflicts in the shaman’s mind. They are obtained through techniques similar to ones described by Eliade and which fit with some of Carl Jung’s theories. Examples of these include dreaming, meditation, and drumming. The practice of shamanism brings forth “a cure, a control, an equilibrium,” says Eliade. (Eliade, 29) He has found shamans to be intelligent, healthy, normal individuals with exceptional character, not psychotics. (Eliade, xviii)

However, Eliade does say, that the shamanic vocation, like any other religious calling (which Toby and Antonio both had at one time), is often manifested by a crisis- a “temporary derangement of the future shamans spiritual equilibrium,” (Eliade, xviii.) But the ecstatic experience seems not like a problem for the shaman, it is the answer. By nature of this particular skill and the ability to cure him or her self and other people, shamans have the knowledge of the “mechanism or theory of illness.” This peculiarity is confirmed with the shaman’s own experience which is “unusual” or “abnormal” when compared with that of others. (Eliade, 31) Antonio claimed knowledge of energy served to save his life while working among the criminally insane, which he claims was a part of his shamanic training. A shaman cured Toby’s chronic back pain, which propelled him into his own vocation.

Stutley’s claim that ecstasy expresses the conscious and unconscious desires of the shaman echoes the Freudian viewpoints of dream analysis, which holds that dreaming is a form of wish-fulfillment. According to Freud’s theory, these desires are typically repressed urges that are sexual or violent in nature. This Freudian explanation extends over similar phenomenon such as fantasy, myth, or works of art. (Larsen, 24) Others have expanded on this viewpoint. Carl Jung views products of the imagination not as pathological, but as natural and instinctive. (Larsen, 25) Dreams, says Jung, are “involuntary, spontaneous products of the unconscious psyche [often revelatory]… pure products of nature not falsified by conscious purpose,” (Jung, 48.) Dreams may contain certain psychic forms called archetypes. (Jung, 48) Shamanic visions contain these as well, as Eliade, Maggie, Toby and Antonio assert that one can access the same realms in visions as in dreams. Jung asserts this realm to be the collective unconscious.

An archetype is a “numinous content,” (Jung, 40) a universal image that has existed since the “remotest times,” (Jung, 5.) It is a symbolic, impersonal figure, “essentially an unconscious content that is altered by becoming conscious and by being perceived, and it takes the colour from the individual consciousness in which it happens to appear,” (Jung, 40.) This content, percolating up from the “transpersonal” realm is personalized as it is altered, and takes specific form for the person experiencing it.

Mere wish-fulfillment as an explanation for dreams or ecstatic experiences falls short of attributing the deeper meanings properly attributable to them. Not all dreams have archetypal and/or ecstatic components. However, this alternate dream theory is in alignment with shamanic phenomena, and attribute appropriate importance to unconscious content which shows itself valuable in various therapeutic techniques. Aside from this debate on the nature of ecstasy, through it anyone is able to experience the contents of the unconscious and the relation of these to their conscious minds.

Stutley tells us that the Greek root of the word ecstasy ekstasis (ek- outside of, and stasis- to stand) signifies the “escape from one’s own rational and definite position,” and asserts that the goal is the same in mysticism. Both of these, she says, “transcend the assumed limits of personality,” Stutely, 28.) Ecstasy references a person who is standing outside his or her self, outside the ordinary, rational waking consciousness. It is the fundamental technique of shamanism.

Eliade tells us that the experience of ecstasy “becomes communicable through universally current symbolism,” (Eliade, 411) through archetypes. Communication through symbolism is the thread that passes on information of what is being experienced by the shaman. Examples include metaphors such as flight and journey which are used in describing the ecstatic experience of the shaman. It is in this way that the shaman crosses the “veil” between human beings and the spirit world, obtaining useful information (Stutley, 28) pertaining to the noumenal realm of the sacred, and that which might be called “the soul.”

Achieving Ecstasy

According to Eliade, ecstasy, also considered a trance state, is achieved by means such as singing, dancing, (Stutley, 2) drumming, narcotics, and possession by spirits. (Eliade, 95) Yogis could achieve the power of flight by psychological discipline and yoga, asceticism and alchemical practices. (Eliade, 409)

Antonio has used drumming to enter the altered state of consciousness, but can now journey without the use of any mechanism to induce ecstasy. (Arguello, interview, 2007) Toby uses meditation. (Marchand, interview, 2007) Renna uses a combination of methods: she sings, drums, dances, and rattles. “I… open myself to perceiving spirit as directly as possible through shamanic journeying and “transfiguring” - letting my hold on a human perspective and identity slip away to better be aware of the divine energy that animates all,” (Shesso, correspondence, 2007.) Maggie calls it a “ a state of allowing… it’s a state of being open… in all your channels, all your chakras, all your energy centers, and wide open, three hundred sixty degrees and connecting to the source that created everything and when you put yourself in that place some pretty amazing things can happen.” She says that she also transcends the limitations and definitions of the ego and lets go of limiting beliefs, and uses meditation to go on shamanic journeys. (Connor, interview, 2007)

Let me know what you think!

I had a spider collection in a small suitcase that was not sealed up- they were going to escape all over the place! Sure enough, out comes a mouse barging through. Then I was moving stuff around- some of Dali’s, too. Organizing. I uncovered a webby insect nest, and I think there were bats, too, in that closet.

I must be uncovering some really hidden places inside me… “Stuff” just doesn’t stay down when it’s its time to come out. Oh, the tears for no reason!!! Go, Stuff, go! And never come back!

I’ve been practicing, situations have cropped up left and right where I can practice being assertive. I love it. I’ve been doing it, and I feel so much better as a whole.

Father went out into the wilderness again one day, fumbled over the gnarled roots, and fell onto the woody skeleton tree, and it stabbed him through the heart. He died in the arms of the tree, who’d embraced the little girl in death too, and decomposed into the Earth in her grave.

The roots of her fear, pain, and betrayal shot so deep into the Earth that it reached magma. When it tapped the magma, red molten fire shot up the roots and oozed regeneratively through the girl’s intestines, healing the wound and producing a chain of islands in the deep, grand sea. She was a powerful queen on this island, and saw her king before her, without fear, eye to eye, love to love.

One day the Queen became pregnant. She bore a healthy, glowing, pink, but ugly child. For an instant she withheld her love. But suddenly the baby became beautiful, and turned into a fine young man. “How could you withhold love from me?” He asked. The mother could not answer. He held her in his arms, “because you too have had love withheld from you, yourself. I forgive you, dear sweet mother, and forgive yourself, too. You are forgiven, and I love you.” She held him in her arms, and rocked him back and forth for seven years, completely blissed out. Grandfather looked on the whole time, unseen, loving them from heaven.

Give more than you get.

Accept love that is offered.

Ask for what you need.

Be good to yourself.

Learn to let go.

My unconscious mind, represented by me as a little girl of about four years old gave permission for this healing to take place, and was willing to have an undeniable experience of healing. I journeyed from my sanctuary in my mind’s eye to the opening which goes into the Lower World. There I found my allies, in a place filled with stalagtites and stalagmites. There is my good friend the chipmunk, the elephant who is my protection- he wrapped me in his trunk today. The deer is power. I rode him up the mountain, spiraling all around it all the way up to the Upper World, to talk to my Higher Self in the clouds with my Grandfather in the Sky. (My higher self has luxurious long hair.) I told them I wanted to be healthy, I wanted to live in my body and be well, I wanted to eat and drink what I wanted without any pain. They agreed to help me. I rode the deer back down to the Lower World to seek the root cause of my disease. I encountered Vila, the beautiful spirit who helps me and I asked for her help as well.

I saw myself as that poor woman in India, whose simple joy was the beautiful God that came to make love to her once in a while. Then, as was my fate, the king came for me. I didn’t want to leave my own humble and meager life! I was content the way it was. I didn’t love the king like I loved my life! Yet instead of terrible butterflies and dread and fear, I felt hunger. I knew that if I went with him, there would be plenty to eat. And I thought, “My beloved Lord won’t go anywhere, he’ll never leave me. It would be ridiculous to repudiate the king who wants to marry me, to defy him out of some dreamy principle out of loyalty to my spirit lover, who’d be with me always anyway.”

I went with the king and he gave me anything I wanted to eat, and there was a banquet where I ate to my heart’s content. I ate chicken, bread and butter, peaches, cheese… I allowed myself to be nurtured. I turned down the ascetic life to be good to my worldly body. Roots from my backside reached deep into the Earth, and golden light traveled upwards through the roots into my body, and my intestines lined with gold. Connected to the power of the Mother Earth, I felt something I hadn’t felt in a long long time: security, ease, calm.

It turns out that the King wasn’t that bad. He only improved with my love, and was no longer scary to me. I expressed gratitude for his love. Golden light trickled down from the sky, nourishing me from above. I bore my sword, and was a good queen to the people. I balanced out the king’s manly pragmatism with a spiritual love that I shared with the people. I had temples built and places of worship. There was a lot of good that came out of me choosing life. I gained power (which is an art to wield) instead of capitulating to it in death.

The Indian king reminded me of the King of the Lower World, who had given me that sword in the first place. I took my time, letting golden energy flow through me and into me, until I was full of light.

A shaman is a “technician of the sacred” states Mircea Eliade in his classic text, Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy (Eliade, 33.) Shamanism is not one fixed belief system, but instead is a number of disparate beliefs having many facets and continually increasing as new situations arise, although retaining many of the old beliefs and overlapping traditions, says Margaret Stutley in her book, Shamanism, an Introduction (Stutley, 3.) He or she is one who believes in the world of spirits which he controls or cooperates with for the benefit of the community (Stutley, 2.) Stephen Larsen, in his stirring work A Shamans Doorway: Opening Imagination to Power and Myth asserts that shamans have the special ability to dream, trance and imagine, and are experts at reaching into the causal level for the needs and wants of the people in the community (Larsen, 9.) A shaman is a healer, reports psychologist Jeannette Gagan, PhD. in a fascinating book, Journeying: Where Shamanism and Psychology Meet (Gagan, 27.) In light of these varied statements, to fully understand what a shaman is, one must describe shamanism in its many facets and techniques, consider its positioning in epistemological debate, and discover what its modern-day practitioners have to say about it.

Aspects of shamanism are found the world over in one form or another. Eliade traces shamanism back to at least the Paleolithic era (Elaide, 11) in Siberia and Central Asia where it traditionally dominated the magico-religious aspect of society (Eliade,4) and describes phenomena with common characteristics in North and South America, Oceana and Indonesia, where it exists alongside other magico-religious practices (Eliade, 5.) The shaman is a mediator between humankind and the gods, says Eliade (Eliade, 8.) They operate within the mythological structure in which they are ethnographically situated, that is, a shaman would address divine entities by the terms used by that particular culture of people. Larsen calls shamans “mediators between myths and reality,” (Larsen, 9) those whose “vocation is the relationship between the mythic imagination and ordinary consciousness,” (Larsen, 59) and who immerse themselves into myths, which are the “local versions of (Jungian) universal archetypes.” (Larsen, 65) Stutley claims that shamans have protected mankind’s mythical knowledge (Stutley, 6.)

Maggie illustrates this point. When asked about the mythology she operated within, she related this mythical knowledge:

… a part of that mythology has to do with the [original] continent of Mu, or Lemeuria. There were no boundaries, it was one land mass and one teaching: that we are brothers and sisters of the light. The sages of the time knew that there would be a breaking up of the lands… and what they did was they took that wisdom and knowledge and protected it. [My italics.] That teaching in Egypt shows up as Egyptian mysticism, that teaching in India showed up as Indian mysticism… that is why there is so much commonality in the indigenous systems in the world. That is kind of the big picture, and then the smaller picture in terms just of the individual and individuality of one being is that you are a spiritual being manifested in a physical body.

She not only notes the protection Eliade mentions that shamans (termed by her sages) provide to mythological teachings, but, in a mythical way she explains why shamanism appears so similarly in various contexts across the globe. Her myth alludes to the essential oneness of all things, which is a metaphysical, spiritual teaching. This myth also explains the condition that human beings are in, (spiritual beings manifested in a physical body) and this provides the context for her work.

Toby, when asked to confirm that he operated in a Native American tradition he responded in this way:

Yes and no. I was taught that way- some of my books and things are at that level, but I try in a lot of ways to divorce myself from that. I’m not Native American- I mean I’ve got some Ojibwa blood in me that goes way back- but to me its more important that we’re all just human beings. The natives do not own this stuff. You can find in Siberia, you find it in North America, you find it in South America, you find it in Hawaii, you find it across the globe, and like journeying…. [a shamanic technique] People do that in South America and people do that in Siberia- two cultures that never crossed paths. Why is that? In my opinion it is because it’s totally natural. People stumbled upon it through spontaneous living, and you see it crop up across the whole globe and in every culture because it is just a natural process and a natural way of connecting [to Spirit].

Toby also acknowledges shamanism as a word-wide phenomenon, and makes the point that its techniques are natural, and that they do not fall outside the capabilities of any human being.

Traditionally, a shaman is seen as someone who does things that are anything but natural: Eliade writes that a shaman functions as a magician, a medicine man, and a guide of souls, a mystic, priest and poet, able to cure maladies and perform miracles (Eliade,4.) Stutley, on the other hand, writes that shamans treat diseases, especially psychosomatic ailments which affect both the body and mind; and aid clan members with a variety of difficulties and problems (Stutley, 2.) Antonio told me that the shaman is a clan’s psychotherapist (Antonio Arguello, interview.)

I asked all of the interviewees what sort of activities they engage in that pertain to their work. Maggie says: “I call myself a personal trainer for your mind, and I’m beginning to call myself a personal trainer for body, mind, and spirit. I’m also a certified master trainer in a number of different disciplines.” (Maggie Connor, interview.) These includes Neuro Linguistics Programming, which is a modern version of huna, the Hawaiian teachings, and Time Line Therapy. Her business was called Ultimate Journey.(www.ujpro.com) She sees people individually and does a form of psychotherapy which engages the subconscious and the “higher self.” Maggie also does group trainings on the Big Island of Hawaii. “Really, what I do is assist people in connecting to their own inner source of truth,” she said (Maggie Connor, interview.)

Antonio said that although wanting to retire “I still see people individually, I do group work, like workshops sometimes, presentations, for instance… sometimes I go down and I do a lecture [at UCD for Professor Coggan] as well. Just different places around, universities, churches, groups, street corners, under the bridge, anywhere.” He hosts drummings, and teaches people how to journey, which is a key shamanic healing technique, also used to aid the client in communicating with his or her unconscious mind (Antonio Arguello, interview.)

Toby’s business, Nature’s Healing Path, LLC. is a “practice in emotional and physical healing as well as a practice in teaching energetic and metaphysical techniques, using knowledge that comes from shamanism.” Toby’s techniques include the following: journey meditations, relaxation meditations, instruction in shamanism, prayer and ceremony, energy work, techniques in connecting to nature and spirit worlds, medicine walks, energy healing, backpacking trips into the mountains while, practicing many aspects of shamanism, and vision quests. (www.natureshealingpath.com)

Renna, as already mentioned, does soul retrievals, shamanic extraction of misplaced energies, and training in shamanic practices. This includes drumming, dancing, singing, using a rattle, and shamanic journeying (Renna Shesso, correspondence.)

Maggie, Antonio, Toby, and Renna all train others in shamanic practices. They also all heal various maladies of their clients, some physical, some mental and emotional. They are experts at matters pertaining to human consciousness and energy work.

A shaman is able to see the soul, as one is a specialist in the matters which pertain to it (Elaide, 8.) According to Eliade, a shaman experiences the numinous and the sacred more intensely than the other members of the community (Eliade, 32.) He says that the quest for the sacred is universal and normal to human behavior, but that shamans differ in this by their ability to have an “ecstatic experience,” and that this is their vocation (Eliade, 107.) Shamanism is using the technique of ecstasy (Eliade, 4.)

I was in love with a god a long time ago in India. He came to me at times, manifesting out of thin air and made love to me. I was faithful and devoted to him, there was no other Being that I loved SO and I gave myself to him completely.

However, the king had something different in mind. He wanted me for his wife himself. I defied him. Unsatisfied and angry for my contempt, he had me killed. That was the first time l ever felt the butterflies that sometimes threaten to shred my gut. The king annihilated that body, but here I am, in another time, safe.

I’m not sure whether what is termed “energy” here is positively scientific or whether it is still Freud’s metaphor. Hasn’t quantum physics proven Freud’s hypothesis that there is energy at play in psychic life? Regardless, shamans say that it is energy, and one takes a shamanic journey in order to transform energy. This is a healing technique that I have begun to study.

It is impossible to study this phenomenon unless I, perhaps in a phenomenological fashion, I study my self as a subject in hopes of discovering a technique that is something that every human being is able to perform in order to heal themselves. Unfortunately, this flies in the face of scientific tradition. However, in certain intellectual circles, “objectivity” is over-rated by scientists of mind who wish to dig deeper into the profundity of the human being. It is impotent in areas laden with questions of meaning and value of human experience. This is an endeavor which is suited to the study of humanity, of human subjects, unobjectified in any way. What kind of a human life is one without meaning?

German philosophers have named us body and spirit- or geist. This spirit that geist refers to is mental, it is completely “natural” and of this world. It is psyche, it is consciousness. My goal is to write about shamanism in a phenomenological way in an attempt to circumvent the lack of hard science as of now to describe the dreams and visions used to transform energy which one feels in their emotions, present in illness.

I am in agreement with Freud’s theory in the science of mind, that sometimes energy in one’s psyche is bound up in a way that is not serving to the subject. This is not unlike a tenet within shamanism. This an ancient technique that functions on a very primary process, primordial, mythical level. In my study, building off of the work of theories of Freud, Jung, Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, and others, perhaps this healing technique will gain wider audience and be of service to more of my fellow human beings.

We are all animated by energy. We all have minds, emotions, physical bodies. Evidently these components interact, causing various degrees of well-being/illness. It is known that all illness is not merely physical, there are psycho-somatic disturbances. If we are to get at the depth of the interplay of these components, we must be willing to go beyond strictly empirical, objectivist science, to study the human geist, or spirit. When we get into realms of meaning and value, we often find spiritual questions hovering in the shadows as well.

Despite the boundary between metaphysics and natural science since the Enlightenment, it seems that lately science is coming upon quite metaphysical discoveries in quantum physics. This is an area which I still must explore in order to be knowledgable as far as the hardcore science of all this is concerned.

I could be my own test subject.

I feel a certain energy in my gut and in my altered state. I invite the memory of the first experience to come. I feel those feelings. I think through the experience in an intellectual way, guided by knowledge as to how to make the situation better. Sometimes, it involves telling myself that it’s okay, that I am safe. Perhaps my body will be sacrificed, but I will be okay. Sometimes, I need to call on some help, and help arrives. I see entities, faces, places, and what I do there with them, it helps me transform the energy.

After my journeys, I have felt like something within me has shifted. I will continue with myself on the operating table, and I will work with others in the future to see if they too can heal themselves using shamanistic techniques. Objectivist skeptics will then be hard pressed to argue, but they will.

“Shamanism” is a term that is shrouded in mystery or dismissed as non-relevant to many who are unfamiliar with the concept. However, the concept is surprisingly modern as it is ancient, and its benefits valuable, although largely hidden from view in our society. Metaphysics has been largely pushed aside by our culture ever since the scientific revolution, and removed from the realm of “reality,” as in that which is empirically, objectively provable. Despite this development, metaphysics is still the basis of traditional religions, and one may even argue that religion with the mythological mind-frame is on a bit of an upswing with the rise of religious fundamentalism in the United States (which has considerable political clout). Although undermined by the scientific method and rejected by religions outside of shamanic cultures, shamanism has not disappeared from society, but has surfaced in a variety of potent ways in the United States.

This ancient phenomenon has appeared in the vast array of cultures across the globe with certain well-documented similarities- most extensively written about by Mircea Eliade (Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy, 1951. Princeton University Press: 2004) and it exhibits some of these in the forms it takes here today. The modern forms of shamanism, as do the traditional, vary amongst each other, and they demonstrate contrasts with the traditional versions. However, the core remains the same, which I will explore within the pages of this study. This work explores texts on shamanism, as well as four case studies of shamans located in the Denver, Colorado area. I have found that shamanism has developed as it situates itself in modern times. Among the facets of today’s shamanism are life-coaching, alternative healing arts, and an uncommon type of psychotherapy that does not shy away from involving matters of the soul in its practice. Sometimes it deals with consciousness and its manifestations in the unconscious, and vice versa: manifestations of the unconscious in the conscious mind. It deals directly with energy and appearances coming from the noumenal world, considered by generations of scientists as either nonexistent, or simply beyond the bounds of human knowledge. Its methods, by which the shaman was healed and then teaches others, (Eliade, 31) serve to unlock a latent power for the subject, and provide healing beyond what traditional psychotherapies often been able to achieve (as documented by Jeannette Gagan, PhD. in Journeying: Where Shamanism and Psychology Meet, Rio Chama Publications: 1998.) Its effects are of valid application to sciences of mind, epistemology, and those concerned with the well-being of humankind.

Modern versions of shamanism have been described to me by the four shamans I located in the last six months. Three I met through someone besides myself who knew a shaman, and the fourth I found after doing an internet search. Each of them is known as a shaman by the members of their community and can perform essentially shamanic techniques as will be described in greater details is this study.

I met Maggie Connor through a friend, who presented her to me as a shaman. Maggie is a kumu (teacher) of Hawaiian mysticism, or huna. She has been studying with George Na’ope, also known as Uncle George, who is a kumu hula master. He is honored for being a “keeper” of the traditional Hawaiian sacred knowledge, including the prayers and chants which are the hula. (Maggie Connor, interview, 11.1.o7) He is recognized for being a “Living World Treasure” by the Hawaiian Governor and the Hawaii state legislature. (www.nea.gov) He performs ceremonies, and is known as “Keeper of the Light,” or the “Keeper of the Calm” by his community. A student of Uncle George, Maggie has studied huna for sixteen years, is a PhD candidate, and performs shamanic techniques taught by the Hawaiian mystics. (Maggie Connor, interview.)

Maggie says she is able to communicate directly with a person’s unconscious mind. She is trained in hypnosis and kinesiology. (Maggie Connor, interview.) The style of kinesiology Maggie uses in sessions with her clients is similar to a divination process of the Eskimo where a system of muscle testing is used. It is designed to communicate with the unconscious mind though the use of physical cues of the body. For example, when Maggie uses kinesiology, she asks her client to hold his or her arm at a 90 degree angle from the body. The practitioner then asks the client’s unconscious, to display a signal for “yes,” and a signal for “no.” Pressure is then applied to the arm. The arm will either be stiff and hold the position or be soft and give away, and this establishes a cue for an affirmative, and a negative response to further questions. In the Eskimo tradition, the subject would sit on the floor with a belt used to hold up his or her head. If the head became heavier following the posing of a question, the answer was affirmative, if the head became lighter, the answer was negative. (Eliade, 296.)

Toby Marchand was presented to me as a shaman by Maggie Connor. Toby has been studying shamanism for twelve years. He met his future teacher seeking relief from chronic back pain. He was healed by this traditional Seminole Indian shaman, who is at least a fourth generation medicine man, and was his student for six years. He was acknowledged by his teacher as a shaman, and now he teaches the same techniques that healed him to others. (Toby Marchand, interview, 10.22.o7)

Antonio Arguello was presented to me as a shaman by my professor at the University of Colorado at Denver, Dr. Sharon Coggan. Antonio is mostly a self-taught shaman, although he did receive some training from a Lakota medicine man, whose lineage is that of the honored visionary Black Elk. He obtained much knowledge through books on shamanism, although he has been able to do shamanic journeying since before he knew that it had a term. Like many traditional shamans, (Eliade, 13) Antonio was taught shamanism in these visions and dreams. He is a published author of shamanic literature, (The Death of the Last Dragon, 1997) and lectures at universities, including the University of Colorado at Denver for Dr. Coggan. Antonio also does individual and group work with people using shamanic techniques, teaching them the techniques. (Antonio Arguello, interview, 11.5.o7)

I found Renna Shesso through an internet search on shamans in Denver, CO. Since it is my goal to explore how shamanism appears in society, I wanted to find one subject to interview from the highly pervasive source of information, people, and service provision that is the internet. Renna Shesso met world-known author and shamanic practitioner Sandra Ingerman (www.shamanism.org) in 1988, and has done numerous advanced formal trainings with her since then. The techniques she practices and uses to help people are consistent with shamanic practices outlined by Eliade, such as soul retrieval and extraction of “misplaced energies.” She also provides shamanic training to others. (Renna Shesso, correspondence, 11.27.o7)

I hold for all of these individuals that they are authentic shamans consistent with the definitions and information presented to me by authors of texts on shamanism, a discussion of which follows.